Table 4 Challenges and responses
Challenges | Response undertaken | Response gaps |
|---|---|---|
Physical environment:   - Emergency shelters characteristics and conditions   - Loss of home, displacement, move to temporary housing solutions | - Supply of camp tents - Temporary optimal accommodations (hotels, homes, relative’s home) | - Suboptimal shelter conditions (lack of privacy and suitable spaces for families with infants) - Hotel accommodation sometimes distant from relatives |
Psychological distress and risk of adverse mental health effects (postpartum depression, PTSD) | - When possible (e.g. security of the families’ house) keep the family together - Professional psychological and health support | - Lack of peer support groups - In several cases, the system failed in finding solutions to keep the family members together (e.g. father working far from the family accommodation) |
Infant and Young Child Feeding | - Hospital welcoming - Breastfeeding support during hospital stay - Professional breastfeeding support at community level, although inhomogeneous | - Pre-emergency suboptimal feeding hospital practices (inappropriate infant formula prescription, no rooming in, newborns fed on a schedule) - Lack of widespread community/professional breastfeeding support after discharge - Inappropriate donations of BMS |