Short Course on Public and Environmental Health in Emergencies

Universidad Tecnológica del Uruguay – UTEC

This course aims to instruct participants on how to critically design WASH responses to humanitarian crises while focusing on protecting public health.

Curriculum

Introduction to WASH and public health in emergencies

• Introduction about the type of emergencies and disasters (tbc what is covered in the governance module)
• Introduction to communicable diseases and link to health
• Effects of disasters on environmental & public health facilities and services
• Introduction to the SPHERE standards on water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion

Design a WASH response to reduce risks of public health emergencies or to respond to public health crises

• The phases of humanitarian emergencies (in acute emergency phase vs protracted/long term crisis) from the public health perspective.
• Prevention and public health emergency preparedness.
• Introduction to the phases of project cycle management, highlighting the key phases from the public health perspective.
• Effective programme/project design and implementation.
• Monitoring and evaluation.

Epidemiology in emergencies

• Foundation of field epidemiology
• Conducting a field (outbreak) investigation (rapid assessments; cross sectional surveys) [incl. data collection methodology (objectives and data needs; protocols; surveys; sample size)]
• Data analysis (basic statistics; interpretation of outbreak data)

WASH approaches in emergency contexts

• Description of WASH approaches in low- and medium-income countries
• Health impacts of WASH interventions in disease outbreaks

WASH in health care facilities

• Health organization for emergencies and disasters
• Infection Prevention & Control