NSW Health works with partner agencies to prepare, prevent, respond to and recover from emergencies and major incidents.
Effective planning and preparation can reduce the impact on people’s health from many types of emergencies including:
Planning and preparation involves developing and testing arrangements that will be used during an emergency response, understanding how best to adapt our response capacity and making sure NSW Health employees can access emergency preparedness training.
NSW Health can provide pre-hospital response (through ambulance services, medical retrieval and deployed health response teams), hospital care and post-hospital recovery during and after emergencies. NSW Health also assesses and responds to risks to the health of a population or community and provides mental health care. Developing and delivering accessible health advice and information to the public, partner agencies and NSW Health employees is a crucial aspect of any emergency response.
NSW Health is guided by state and national emergency management plans and legislation to ensure all aspects of an emergency and are effectively managed from a health perspective.
During a public health emergency response, epidemiology is used to understand the needs of affected populations, the nature of the disease or exposure, and to inform control activities.
Laboratory tests enhance patient management and public health response to a health emergency, which may be due to a communicable disease, or a biological, chemical or trauma incident.
