ABSTRACT
Natural and man-made disasters occurred more frequently in recent decades along with the growing global population, destructions of natural habitat, warming of global temperatures, increasing human conflicts and wars. Tragedies continued, but in recent history, the year 2020 could be considered as one of the most chaotic year overshadowed by the global pandemic of Covid-19 that seriously threatening the lives and livelihood of everyone on earth. With misinformation and mismanagement in early phase, it has resulted deaths of millions of human lives. In many countries, health care system collapsed due to failure of their national public health policy and hospitals were overwhelmed with patients infected with Covid-19 while running short of medical supplies, manpower and support, instigating a 'medical disaster'. Many healthcare workers have never been exposed to such a critical condition before. Without adequate and proper personal protection equipment, they could easily turn out to be the next victims. Such eminent threats could cause an extensive psychological and social impact of their health. Recent studies revealed that one quarter to three quarters of the healthcare workers have psychological distress during the Covid-19 pandemic, with symptoms suffering from depression, anxiety, sleep disorder, and other syndromes related to obsessive-compulsive behavior and post-traumatic stress disorders. Impact from burnout, being stigmatized, fear of being contracted, guilt of transmitting infection, increasing isolation and frustration and events of suicide had been reported. In a follow-up survey of the mental health of hospital workers a year aftermath the 2003 SARS epidemics, strong resilience was observed. The hospital that had been severely affected by SARS had resumed normalcy to the pre-epidemic stage. One of the influencing factors was the thorough revisions of its reactive and proactive strategy towards disaster management, emphasizing adequate human resources, training and support, and comfortable stocks of personal protection equipment and medical supplies. In the care of Covid-19 patients, team cooperation with sharing of information, daily monitoring of the health and psychological support of workers were enhanced. Strict infection control procedure was enforced with routinely screening of potential cases, social distancing, hand sanitization, and mandatory wearing of surgical mask for all patients, workers and visitors at all time. As a result, there were no significant increase of psychiatric morbidity among the hospital workers in the recent survey during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this constant changing world, existential threats are a reality of life on earth, so does the Covid-19 pandemic. Although it is devastating, but pandemics are nothing new. Many people might not remember the earlier coronavirus pandemics but what we are experiencing now is just like what we had been through during the SARS pandemic 18 years ago. What we had learned from the lessons in the past are equally effective in containing the Covid-19 and other future epidemics. In order to reduce the impact of Covid-19 pandemic and other future outbreaks, it is now the right time to build the resilience of healthcare organizations and their workers.