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Today, most hospitals, public health agencies are often unable to acquire and deploy the resources needed to respond to a large-scale disaster effectively. Hurricane Katrina exposed the weaknesses of government agencies and relief organizations, when it comes to delivering emergency supplies and equipment.
The overwhelming number of victims and widespread destruction caused by the disaster exacerbates the coordination efforts put by these organizations.

Mostly the hospitals run out of the basic medicines, fall short of ventilators, beds and the transportation services for transferring the patients from the impacted sites to hospitals. The medial services organizations has to collectively plan their strategy for building infrastructure to avoid such out of stock situations and to be quick responsive now it is clear that Hospitals and the public relief organizations are required to form SCM strategies as one of the major component of their "Disaster Management Plan (DMP)".

2. Services Required in Disaster

Medical Services include both the medical supplies as well as the human services required to be delivered to the impacted sites. This necessitates building warehousing and transportation infrastructure for proper storage and fast distribution of the supplier to right places.

Food & Apparel Services, as the name suggests, provide basic amenities to survival of human beings covering food, apparels etc. Rehabilitation Services are generally required during the recovery phase but sometimes some quick rehabilitation is also required like moving big chunks of earth in case of earthquakes etc. to bring the living conditions to normal form. Support Services covers the kind of services required for supporting the ongoing rescue operations which includes providing communication to impacted areas, transportation services for the doctors and other civil worker etc.

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* Contributed by: -
Bhupinder Singh & Prasad Deo,
Students of PGP 2,
NITIE, Mumbai.