Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

The president’s National Commission on Children and Disasters met to continue planning for the special needs of children in the worst of times.
Existing standards and guidelines do not account for pediatric differences.
Irwin Redlener, MD, Commissioner, noted that it would be relatively easy to come up with good recommendations, but relatively hard to get them approved by all parties.
Mark Shriver, Chairman, responded, “If disaster hits and your child dies because federal agencies can’t see eye to eye, that’s just unacceptable.”
Several problems illustrate the difficulty: Mandating minimum shelter standards could inhibit emergent, improvised solutions, or impose unrealistic burdens on smaller communities. Often there are no evidence based medical plans, so groups of experts will need to provide consensus opinions. What may strike one person as “comfort measures,” and thus of lower priority, may strike another parent as basic, minimal childcare; Shriver mentioned bathing children in sinks as an example. While victims need shelter from day one, cached supplies may not make to the sites for 72 to 96 hours after the state’s governor makes a request.
An attendee from Columbia University pointed out that the international community has generally had more experience with modern disaster management, and might provide some useful templates, citing the Sphere Project (http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/146/84/lang,English/) as an example.
Perhaps the most difficult problem for children is recovery. Dr. Redlener said recovery isn’t just infrastructure, it’s young psyches for whom things are not ever going to be “just like before.” He noted that we need to know what works and what doesn’t, that both psychological and material support are needed, and that current regulations are relatively arbitrary and limiting. The goal, he said, is to get these kids back onto a normal or better developmental and educational curve.
Shriver pointed out that when a city rebuilds, it upgrades, why not think that way about recovery for children?
For background on the Commission: http://www.uhhospitals.org/rainbowchildren/tabid/4354/Default.aspx