PESHAWAR, Dec 13: The World Health Organization has agreed to conduct skill development workshops for health professionals serving in areas with no system to respond to mass casualties and other emergency situations.

"The emergency management unit of the WHO has chalked out a blueprint, based on short, medium and long-term planning for increasing the capacity of health units in areas having no proper system to tackle emergency situation like earthquakes and bomb blasts," Dr Saeed Akbar Khan, operation medical officer of the WHO for NWFP and Fata, told Dawn on Monday.

He said the programme was based on skill development of health professionals in the NWFP and Balochistan to cope with an emergency situation. In the first phase training workshops would be held in Khyber Agency, Upper Dir, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat and Mansehra in the NWFP and Killa Saifullah, Jaffarabad, Kalat, Lasbella and Gwadar in Balochistan, he added.

Meanwhile, a Peshawar-based emergency medical officer of the WHO, Dr Quaid Saeed, said that in the last week of December two training workshops, one each in Khyber Agency and Killa Siafullah had been scheduled because they frequently face mass casualties in the shape of road accidents, bomb blast and earthquake incidents.

The workshops would be on preparation of hospital emergency plans and development of a disease surveillance system, he said, adding that in most parts of the two provinces there was no existing system to respond to casualties.

Follow up workshops in one of the selected districts of both the provinces would be held and the participants would be asked to develop their own emergency plans peculiar to their own environment and situation.

Participants would also be required to identify resources required for implementation of such plans, whereas the WHO would arrange resources for such an emergency preparedness and response system that would be put in place in the two pilot districts of the NWFP and Balochistan.

In the long-term planning the WHO would help health departments of the two provinces to acquire complete system of emergency preparedness and response in two selected districts.

A core team consisting of officials of the WHO and respective health departments of the two provinces would monitor the functioning of the system in the two districts.

It would require development of custom-built monitoring plans for the purpose. In case disaster the team would evaluate the response and prepare a report on the efficiency of the response.