General information
Purpose
- To provide immediate basic, essential curative, preventive and community health care in emergency situations, where local medical facilities are insufficient or have been destroyed.
Capacity
- This emergency unit has a principal capacity of up to 30’000 population served, using a modular approach adjusting to the actual needs. There is a secondary capacity of 20 overnight beds. The unit is self-contained for one month.
Principal tasks
Outpatient curative
- Basic treatment according to WHO basic treatment protocols, using WHO Essential Drug lists.
- Services, with 10 to 20 "overnight beds" mainly for diarrhoeal and observation cases.
Preventive Mother and Child Health Care (MCH)
- Services, with an immunisation capacity for epidemics such as measles.
- Deliveries (very simple delivery bed ).
Community Health with Primary Health Care (PHC)
- Concentrating on the eight essential PHC fundamentals, and the training, supervision and use of Community Health Workers (CHWs), including Traditional Birth Attendants and Health Information Teams (HIT).
Nutritional Surveillance
- Disease and nutritional surveillance, with formal reporting.
Indicative staffing patterns
- 1 Curative / Community Health Nurse
At time of printing, the following National Societies keep a BHC ERU:
- Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish.
The BHC is based on the IEHK (Interagency Emergency Health Kit).
Standard modules
- Inpatient IPD module (with 20 observation beds)
- Pharmacy module (WHO Interagency Emergency Health Kit)
- Mother Child Health module
- Administration Equipment module
- Technical Equipment module
- Telecommunication Equipment module
- Water and Sanitation Equipment module
- Personal Equipment module