WITH less than a week to go before the official start of the hurricane season Chairman of the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) Tanny Shirley says its disaster preparedness plans are in high gear.

“We have a very surgical and clinical type of disaster preparedness programme each year (which) we engage through the Ministry of Health and co-ordinate with the region. It has already kicked in and all necessary plans are being made, all the stakeholders are coming together and having meetings and doing all the assessments,” Shirley told the Jamaica Observer, last Thursday.

Already the Climate Prediction Centre of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is forecasting an active or extremely active hurricane season.

The SERHA chairman said the region is in protective mode.

“Every year we prepare for the worst. We have never taken a disaster season lightly. We always plan for the worst scenario,” he told the Observer.

SEHRA has oversight responsibility for the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH).

Senior medical officer for KPH, Dr Patrick Bhoorasingh said the KPH has its plan of action ready.

“It’s part of our function; we have a disaster plan for the hospital and we have already had our meetings to prepare ourselves for the hurricane,” he said.

Addressing concerns about the hospital’s power supply in the event of outages, he said, was also covered.

“The generator is also part of the plan. We over time have had issues with the generator. We are planning to increase the capacity to make it adequate. We couldn’t run the whole hospital, but it will run the essential areas like the operating theatres, essential care and the emergency room,” Dr Bhoorasingh told the Observer.

“We are well up on that and other hurricane preparations,” he said, confidently.