PAHO’s Virtual Health Library for Disasters is the result of a process of consultation and exchange among the disaster and emergency programs of WHO and PAHO, all WHO technical divisions, other United Nations agencies such as UNHCR, UNICEF, the ISDR, the International Committee for the Red Cross, Project SPHERE, NGOs such as OXFAM and national organizations such as Costa Rica’s National Emergency Commission. The Library contains more than 400 scientific and technical documents including the most important works published by these agencies on disasters and emergencies. It also has an easy-to-use search engine that allows searching by topics, country, keyword, title, publisher or any other word.
The new library offers all documents in HTML and many in PDF format on a wide variety of health topics related to emergencies and disasters including:
- principles and guidelines for public health in emergencies and disasters
- emergency preparedness and response
- disaster mitigation
- human rights and humanitarian legislation
- health of refugees and displaced population
- environmental health and chemical products
- communicable diseases
- parasitic and vector-borne diseases
- food and nutrition
- reproductive health, child health and immunization
- mental health
- management of supplies and essential drugs
- management of war-wounded and injuries