Background: Disaster and mental health preparedness are inseparable domains highlighted during all the major disasters in India. To build Disaster-Mental health Preparedness (Disaster MHP), one has to understand the existing strategies, systemic efforts, and ground-level implementation. In this scoping review, we have analyzed the mental health preparedness efforts during major disasters in India. Methodology: We followed the Peters MDJ et al framework for scoping review named ‘Guidance for conducting systematic scoping reviews. This included the searching relevant articles on PubMed and google Scholar, and concept-context of the review. Results: The review identified major efforts taken during ten disasters in past 40 years and mapping of the potential areas for development of sustainable efforts towards Disaster MHP. Conclusion: This is the first systematic scoping review from India that provides insight into strength and sustainability of disaster mental health preparedness in India. The mapping of the review focuses on the models emerged from Bhopal, Odisha, Tamilnadu and NIMHANS for the future infrastructure, capacity building, and environment required for Disaster-MHP in India.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, various public health measures have been in focus, viz. social distancing, hand hygiene, use of masks, screening of patients for COVID-19 symptoms, development of quarantine and isolation facilities, and public health surveillance. Most of these relate to the principles of prevention, early case detection, and primary care. In the ongoing fight against COVID-19, community medicine (CM) professionals are involved at various positions and have been leading from the front in a variety of activities, be it screening, patient care, surveillance, orientation and training of front line workers, community engagement, evidence generation through research, and development of guidelines. However, their engagement in policymaking has still been limited. The government should work more closely with CM professionals in order to stem the tide of COVID-19 or any such public health emergencies in the future by shifting the focus to preventive and promotive interventions. CM professionals should take a more proactive approach in getting involved in policymaking and demonstrate leadership through their actions to lead the national, state, and district-level public health teams through collaboration across disciplines and sectors. This will help bring the leadership of public health in India in the right hands for optimum population health and appropriate and timely health emergency response.
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