NON-GOVERNMENT/NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
CRED
The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) was established in 1973 as a non-profit institution, with international status under the Belgian Law. It is located within the School of Public Health of the Universit? Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Brussels. CRED became a World health Organisation Collaborating Centre in 1980 and has expanded its support of the WHO Global Programme for Emergency Preparedness and Response. Although the main focus of the Centre is on safeguards, public health and the sanitary aspects of disasters, CRED also studies the socio-economic and long-term effects of these large-scale disasters. Increasingly, preparedness, principally at the level of human resource development as well as problems linked to the management of crises have gained a higher profile within CRED's activities. The Centre is unique in a field where most agencies concentrate their efforts on direct action and envisage only rarely operational and policy research, the evaluation of aid or structural preparedness. Long-term management, through improved local and international preparedness, is recognised increasingly as an indispensable element of emergency aid programmes. This is also the case in the consideration of disasters during major development projects, as well as the environmental and socio-economic results of natural disasters. The goals of CRED are to address these gaps in both internationa l and national contexts. Website: "http://www.cred.be/" [Summary provided by CRED.]