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I would like to thank Dr. Tajima and all of you for your giving me a chance of this presentation in the first meeting of Japan-US Global Health Network.

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The title of my presentation is "The Global Health Disaster Network, A Disaster Oriented Project of Japan-US Global Health Network".

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I. Disaster and Information Transmission

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The system for information transfer should be most helpful during the first couples of days after some disaster of an overwhelming scale. For example, 58 hospitals in Osaka, a neighboring prefecture of Kobe, sent medical teams during a month after the Earthquake broke out. However, only 4 out of 58 hospitals could send their teams to Kobe areas during the first 48 hours. The remainder were just waiting for some request or commands to help Kobe. They had no means to know that the local governments there were too heavily damaged to make contact with surrounding cities to ask help just after the earthquake. Tragically, the information systems did not exist. (Ref-1)

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In the case of the Salin Attack by Ohmu-Shinrikyo in Tokyo on March 20th, 1995, it was 11:00 am when the Headquarters of Tokyo Police Office announced that salin was a suspicious cause which injured many passengers in the subway. It was two and a half-hours later after the first patient was transported to an Emergency Medical Center. The delay of the information was attributable to loss of a chance to administer Pralidoxime Methiodide (PAM), an antidote of salin, in many patients.(Ref-2)

These instances suggested that if the accurate and timely information was available, needless morbidity and mortality would be prevented. Thus, establishing a reliable system for telecommunication in the emergency and disaster field is one of the most important problems we face.

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Perhaps the most exciting advancement in the area of information transfer is the Internet (Ref-3). It is reaching millions of people in the world and also is growing rapidly in Japan.

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During the Kobe Earthquake the benefit of the Internet during a disaster was soon realized. More than 25 WWW servers were started solely to dispatch information from Kobe during the first six days after the earthquake. One of the web sites had 360,000 accesses from all over the world during the first 20 days. More than a dozen of mailing lists and news servers were started for NGOs and volunteers who worked in Kobe, and approximately 5,000 people were connected by the mailing lists. These were developed not as a part of a coordinated disaster relief by government, but rather by people themselves.

The Internet was applied at grass roots level in 1995. However, a more formally developed system would permit communication to be instantly established among people who are involved in disaster and relief activities. The concept of disaster information network by the Internet is becoming realized by establishing the Global Health Disaster Network.

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II. Global Health Disaster Network (GHDNet) and Its New Era

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Just after one year's anniversary, GHDNet is to open the next door to join the new project, the Japan US Global Health Network (JUGHNet). Our next goal is to establish a new and official network to transmit information for disaster and emergency medicine. It should be a nation-wide network in which many organizations, governmental and non-governmental are to be voluntarily involved. This network will be open for organizations in US and those in rest of the world.

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Organizations to be connected by the network will enter into an agreement. The agreement will be quite simple.

Right: Each organization has a right to have high quality Internet information about disasters and disaster responses by the other members.

Duties: Each organization should pay for its expenses to connect to the Internet. It should report about its response plans for a certain disaster with minimum time delay. The report should be followed by the action reports throughout the course of the disaster.

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WWW Home Page for the GHDNet will be the official home page for the JUGHNet Disaster Project. The directory of organizations connected by GHDNet will be listed on the home page. The directory also includes worldwide lists of organizations and individuals involved in disaster relief. The home page will establish a global database of disaster information in the past and will show it on the home page.

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III. Monitoring Systems of Disasters and of Disaster Responses

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Hopefully, cooperative satellite systems of NASA and NASDA will enable us to monitor any cities or towns in US and Japan from the sky. The first information indeed can be dispatched by other existing systems, that is seismological-monitoring systems on the ground. However, once the GHDNet is informed of a disaster broken out in a certain area, the area becomes a target of the satellite monitoring. If the satellite views show uncontrolled fires in some populated areas, break down of large buildings, highways, and trains, it'll be a time for proclaiming a state of emergency. Each organization connected to GHDNet will start its response according to its plans decided beforehand.

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This shows a big forest fire in Mongol observed by NASDA satellite images two months ago. Comparing to the left picture which was taken a year a go, smokes from the forests are clearly observed in the right picture. Both pictures shows 75 and 75 kilometers' areas.

　　

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In the second step, Disaster Monitoring System by NASA would be able to cover all over the world. The satellite visions of disaster areas will be sent to some organizations in the world which are connected by GHDNet. The information will help the organizations, national or international, governmental or non-governmental, to take rapid reactions to send their teams to help people in the disaster area. Some Japanese organizations directed to international assistance such as Japan Disaster Relief (JDR), Japan Red Cross (JRC), and The Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA) will be good candidates for connecting to the International GHDNet.

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This is our conclusion. Among the several components of JUGHNet, transmission of information about disasters is one of the most important. It is the mission assigned to GHDNet in Japan. GHDNet is expected to help individuals and organizations, irrespective of national or international, governmental, or non-governmental, to communicate with each other in case of disasters.

Thank you very much.