Hospital preparedness checklist , Focus on pandemic (H1N1) 2009

Hospitals play a critical role within the health system in providing essential medical care to the community, particularly during a crisis, such as an epidemic or a pandemic. Prolonged and combined outbreaks can lead to the progressive spread of disease with rapidly increasing service demands that can potentially overwhelm the capacity of hospitals and the health system at large. To enhance the readiness of the health facilities to cope with the challenges of an epidemic, a pandemic or any other emergency or disaster, hospital managers need to ensure the initiation of relevant generic priority action. This document aims to provide a checklist of the key action to carry out in the context of a continuous hospital emergency preparedness process.

Keywords
Disease outbreaks
Influenza A virus, H1N1 subtype
Disaster planning
Hospital units - organization and administration
Hospital planning
Health resources - utilization
Europe