IFRC*: Choreographer of Disaster Management - Preparing for Tomorrow's Disasters

The case illustrates the efforts of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) in the area of emergency response preparedness. It provides an anecdotal description of IFRC's failure in promptly responding to the 1998 Hurricane Mitch disaster that swept through Central America. It then proceeds in describing how the disaster triggered off IFRC's pilot initiative, the Pan-American Disaster Response Unit, as well as general awareness on the need to institutionalize preparedness by leveraging on five different resources: people, knowledge, goods, money, and the humanitarian community.