Impact of Hurricane Luis on the health services of Antigua and Barbuda.

Abstract

Antigua and Barbuda, located in the Caribbean, was one of the countries most affected by Hurricane Luis in 1995. Electricity, water supply and health facilities were disrupted for several weeks. Inadequate criteria at the design stages, unsound structural design, and lack of maintenance of building components, are some of the reasons that damage was so severe. The main hospitals and 6 health facilities were destroyed and flooded and most of the medical staff had to cope with their own damaged houses. Although the knowledge and materials are available to reduce the losses caused by hurricanes, building codes are not reinforced by laws and preventive maintenance to protect health care facilities from natural hazard damage is not usually budgeted for. The additional cost of making a single or two-storey health facility almost invulnerable to future catastrophe in a hurricane is only 2% in initial capital cost and becomes negligible when spread over the life of a building. The effort of UN International Decade for Natural Disasters (IDNDR) directed towards disaster mitigation should be increased over the remainder of the decade to ensure that standards are respected and building codes are mandatory.