Click a Brick

Click a Brick uses ICTs to gather public support on the issue of keeping health facilities safe in emergencies. The first phase of the campaign urges people to participate by setting a brick, helping to rebuild (virtually) a destroyed hospital. By entering their name on the Click a Brick website, citizen-advocates may call on health professionals, engineers, architects, city planners, financial institutions, and policy and decision makers to come together to make hospitals safe in emergencies. These personnel - and any others - may access an associated suite of online materials such as case studies, fact sheets, advocacy tools, and multimedia resources designed to raise awareness and spark action.

Later stages of Click a Brick are integrating a number of new social media tools (e.g., social networking sites, augmented reality, mobile phone link-ups). For example, in 2010, the campaign opened a Facebook page in an effort to build public support to move decision-makers in Southeast Asia, which faces some of the world's worst natural disasters, to take concrete action. Through a test application, campaign organisers are hoping to communicate the message that "disasters destroy in seconds", by inviting people to test how quickly they can respond and to challenge friends to beat their time. The idea is that each reaction to the test will count towards building the wave of public support that WHO has launched to ensure that health facilities are built to withstand emergencies and have contingency plans in place and that staff are trained to help people in post-disaster conditions.

Health, Health Emergencies, Risk Reduction, Risk Management, Structural and Non-structural Safety of Health Facilities, Preparedness.

According to WHO, over the last decade, 58% of deaths globally due to natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, earthquakes, and tsunamis, occurred in South-East Asia. During the December 2004 tsunami, 30 of the 240 health clinics were destroyed in Aceh province, Indonesia; 77 others were seriously damaged. WHO estimates that it only costs 4% more to include disaster protection into designs, and 1% more to retrofit hospitals, so that they can keep health workers and communities safe. Health equipment must also remain intact and functional in emergencies. Also, health staff must be organised and trained for prompt and rapid response.

In recognition of the importance of these issues, the theme for WHO's World Health Day 2009 is "Health Facilities in Emergencies". The focus of the biennial World Disaster Reduction Campaign (2008-2009) is also on the same issue: "Hospitals Safe from Disasters: Reduce Risk, Protect Health Facilities, Save Lives." In this global effort, WHO is partnering with the Secretariat of the United Nations (UN) International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) and the World Bank to work so that all health facilities stand up to emergencies and continue to function.