Climate Change Update: To prevent more deaths during disaster, Surveillance in Post Extreme Emergencies and Disaster (SPEED), a project supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), uses SMS / text messages on mobile phones or the internet to alert emergency health officials to dangerous situations and send them health information, and receive data on health conditions in communities and reports of disaster damage

IRIN Asia | PHILIPPINES: Texting help and health in disaster response | Philippines | Natural Disasters: "SPEED can be activated within 24 hours of any disaster, including displacement caused by conflict, and works by tapping into the vast mobile phone network in the Philippines - official statistics say almost everyone has a handset. Where mobile phone systems are down, field reporters can use radios to send in statistics for their area, she said. Health and emergency “reporters”, usually disaster response or health officers at the barangay (the smallest administrative area) or municipal level, fan out to community health facilities, hospitals and evacuation centres to check on reported cases of the most common post-disaster diseases. This data and other information is then sent via mobile phone - using codes and formats specially designed for the system - to the central SPEED server based in Manila, where it is collated and analyzed before making the information accessible to emergency officials at all levels of government. "

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