Grant: Project Grant - PA - Pandemics/Health Emergencies Res. - Multi-Year Funding

A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society that leads to human, material, economic, and environmental losses. A disaster can be natural, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, or man-made, such as wars, technological accidents and terrorist attacks. Since 2000, such disasters have led to over 1.7 million deaths and caused over USD3.5 quadrillion dollars in damages globally. Ninety-five of these events have been recorded in Canada that have resulted in over 1,226 deaths and USD23 billion dollars in damages. Increasing disasters and emergencies threaten to overwhelm the ability of health systems. People living with kidney diseases are uniquely vulnerable to disasters especially those who are dependent on dialysis. Patients who perform dialysis at home depend on a steady supply and availability of clean water, electricity, and equipment. Patients who receive in-center hemodialysis need these as well as technicians and nurses. A disaster management protocol can enable timely, effective, and appropriate responses and smooth recovery. We have conducted background work and developed a framework for a disaster management protocol. We are now proposing to operationalize this framework and develop comprehensive and national guidelines for disaster management in Canada. To do this, we will first review documents in disaster management at kidney care facilities and conduct a short survey to identify gaps in services. We will then obtain the perspectives of patients on different types of dialysis, their caregivers, and kidney transplant recipients who have been directly or indirectly impacted by a disaster over the past 5 years. We will then hold a national conference where we will use all the data we have generated to develop national guidelines. Over long-term goal is to make the healthcare system that delivers care to patients with kidney diseases more resilient.