Evidence-based intervention to cope with disaster

By Rabi Kiran Adhikari

COVID-19 first identified in Wuhan City, China has now affected the normal lives in almost all countries. In Nepal, the number of infected people is increasing every day, coincidently with the increasing flow of people from India to Nepal alongside the provision of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test. This has caused a block down of the movement of the people for an uncertain period. The livelihood, economic activities, and educational activities are halted or slowed down. The educational need of all are same but due to the family coping capacity and their resilience, it is not being prioritized wisely in the rural communities and poor strata settings.

A considerable issue observed recently in children’s’ learning emerge from the limited care of student’s need during disaster settings by government and academics. These limitations are the result of limited awareness in disaster management, preparedness proactiveness and limited attention even though the policy was so clear at the policy implementation level. Experience of managing things from a disaster perspective that of the health disaster were completely absent in Nepal. Second, the environment, which is essential to make the educational system runs using alternatives and the social interaction was not at the place. As a result, the educational need was completed ignored because the community were not coming up with pressure as most of the other disaster used to have short term effects but COVID 19 disaster was a different form of disaster and no one could predict it. So the environmental perspective was not predicted as a result the children’s need was not being taken importantly. Also, the political environment was not straight forward to ensure that the alternatives for different strata of people, school or communities are addressed. The stress due to lockdown and the choices of livelihood were becoming the major agendas being a poor country, so educational needs were completed out from their mindset. The resilient perspective was considered in Nepal for the shake of livelihood only. These resilience activities should also include the educational need of the children so that the smooth functioning of education can be guaranteed from policy and practice and the alternatives are verified and implemented promptly.

Keeping resilience in the centre to work for the future perspective of children learning need in school is always important. As social interaction and family education is also important. Therefore a relief aid program aligning with the longer-term resilience development measures should be made a serious priority in consideration to the broader need of society. A new shift to integrated resilience from a vertical approach of development process like education, health, food, livelihood, climate change etc. should be a right approach of our interventional modality of preventing, mitigating and responding the larger societal needs.

The most important aspect is that during the emergencies setting and potential future disaster, the preparedness and proactive response must be important. Regularization of service, educational need, food supply and economic activities are the one which each state should function. Sometimes the immediate effect is less harmful than that of in long run, so it is important that considering the long-term impact of any decision to be highly considered. Hence, the inequality presented recently in education for public and private school also shows that there are a lot more system development as well as a consideration of resilience are properly placed. It is imperative that providing the right information for the evidence-based decision-making process. The larger view from a sociological perspective is that a strong coping mechanism should be in place to ensure that people can have risk mitigation capacity as well as they are well prepared to address the devastating effect of it.

The problem is more devastating than the earthquake, but it seems like everyone is in wait and see mood, which is a big mistake. Proactiveness would serve for the state, country people and all the stakeholders to revive speedily. It is, therefore, a   long term solution with prioritizing resilience-building program ensuring different needs, priorities, and capacities are the need of today. To ease this process, there is a need for a strong political and expert mix authority and system which can proactively use the fast track recommendation and implementation to address the current and post COVID issues. An integrated approach to address the wider array of prevailing issues is the need of today in which an evidence-based policy and system mechanism needed to be at place with the leadership of experts, as we did in earthquake response.