Assessing Health Facility Preparedness for Disaster Events in Afghanistan
The development of the SAFE-Prep Tool
- Countries
- Afghanistan
- Duration
- 2024-2025
Afghanistan regularly experiences extreme weather and geological hazards resulting in a high burden of mortality, health systems impacts, and economic damage. With climate change and seismic risks, Afghanistan’s health system must adapt by identifying vulnerabilities and enhancing preparedness.
This research reviewed the existing tools for assessing health facility preparedness. In addition, through expert involvement, a simplified assessment tool was developed for health facilities to identify gaps in preparedness and recommending ‘low-hanging fruit’ solutions.
Main Activities
- Conducted a scoping review to map existing emergency preparedness assessment tools and performed a SWOT analysis to evaluate their applicability in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS).
- Developed the SAFE-Prep (Simplified Assessment for Facility Preparedness in Emergencies) tool based on identified gaps and refined it through a Delphi-method with expert input.
- Engaged local and international stakeholders to assess the feasibility and relevance of the SAFE-Prep tool for improving health facility preparedness in FCAS.

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