When floods killed more than a dozen people and caused millions of dollars in infrastructural damage last December in Trinidad, the Georgetown Hospital in St. Vincent weathered the storm, according to an article on the IPS News website.
Some 350,000 dollars was allocated to retrofit Georgetown as a "smart hospital." Georgetown had structural and functional deficiencies including an unsafe roof, no backup power supply and no water storage system.
The work done on the hospital included the renovating of the roof, waterproofing of the windows, installation of photovoltaic solar panels to ensure an alternative power supply and the introduction of a rainwater harvesting system. During the flooding, the island’s water supply system was down but the hospital’s water supply remained functional.
The smart hospital initiative was launched in the Caribbean about a decade ago and has become a global standard for assessing the likelihood a hospital can remain functional in disaster situations.
According to a report by the UK’s Department for International Development, more than 67 percent of hospitals in the Caribbean and Latin America are located in areas of higher risk of disaster.
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