Disaster planning, follow-up lagging, speaker tells ethicists

Published: 2007-03-05

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Preparation, response and follow-up to disasters, man-made and natural, is woefully inadequate in the U.S., and Catholic health care must help bring the social justice aspects of that situation to light, a physician and educator said March 2. Dr. Erin Egan, who is also an attorney and teaches both bioethics and internal medicine at Loyola University Chicago, addressed a workshop session on "Preparing for the Worst: Issues in Disaster Planning" at a gathering of Catholic health care ethicists in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. "Ten years ago most of us wouldn't have cared about any of this," Egan said. "We weren't thinking about them then and I'm not sure we're thinking about them well now." But more than 18 months after Hurricane Katrina hit, "so many horrible things are still happening in New Orleans, and it's off our radar," she said. "We in Catholic health care have to keep the faith that we'll be there until the problems are resolved." Egan divided types of disasters into four categories: natural geological disasters such as Hurricane Katrina; natural infectious disasters such as avian flu; man-made explosive disasters such as the bombings of the World Trade Center's twin towers or the Oklahoma City federal building; and man-made infectious disasters such as anthrax. She said she had undergone emergency preparedness training through the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team but did not know any other colleague at Loyola who had done so.

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