Protection for Lives of Mothers and Children by Utilizing Regional Supports in the Event of a Natural Disaster

Severe natural disasters occurred, according to progress of global warming. For recent years in Japan, seasonal heavy rains have occurred in several areas and many people have been affected by disaster damages. In the Great East Japan earthquake and its tsunami, killed and missing people reached over 20,000 and about 500 children were included among these dead people. For protecting big and unpredictable disasters under climate change, we have to change the concept of complete protection by hard measures into the concept of how to reduce the human damage and of how to reduce the damage risk. It is very important to balance the hard and soft measures. Capacity building for protecting the life of mothers, children and elder people by utilizing the regional support groups is important. I focused on disaster preparedness such as disaster prevention activities and investments for risk mitigation, to protect the lives of mothers, children and elder people. A study meeting for disaster prevention with nurses, doctors and students in nursing schools will establish the sustainable capability of and the knowledge for disaster prevention. The physical power of mothers and children is weak and moreover mothers are very busy. Therefore, their participations in disaster prevention activities are limited. I proposed a new support system by the cooperation with regional support groups.