Natura Disasters🌋🌍

 

A natural disaster is an event caused by a natural hazard. The latter is defined by UNSDR as “a natural process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage” – e.g., an earthquake, hurricane, or drought (UNSDR, 2009: p. 20). In order to analyze natural hazards, experts look at their speed, area of impact, magnitude, and duration (UNSDR, 2009). Natural hazards such as earthquakes occur in short periods of time and impact small areas, while other hazards such as droughts develop over long periods of time and impact large areas. Furthermore, some natural hazards follow a geographic distribution like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that often occur along tectonic plates on land or the ocean floor (Leaning and Guha-Sapir, 2013).


Natural disasters are common, devastating and impact a large number of people annually. In recent years, there have been a series of major natural disasters including earthquakes in Haiti (2010), earthquake followed by a tsunami in Japan (2011) and Nepal (2015), floods in Pakistan (2013 and 2010) and India (2013), hurricanes in the United States (2005 and 2012), and typhoons in Philippines (2011 and 2013). The impact of such large disasters is tremendous. For example, in 2010 the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster (CRED) reported 436 disasters worldwide accounting for 328 634 deaths. These numbers are particularly alarming since natural disasters are increasing – a trend experts predict will continue due to global climate change. The culmination of climate change and other challenges such as poverty, population growth, and increased urbanization is expected to compound disasters intensifying them and the damage they cause (Leaning and Guha-Sapir, 2013). This situation is particularly challenging for low-income countries since they lack the resources to prepare, mitigate, and respond to natural disasters. Natural disasters represent major development setbacks for low-income countries; however, the prevention and reduction of natural disasters are seldom priorities in development strategies (Andrade da Silva and Cernat, 2012).


Consequences of Natural Disasters

Natural disasters have a significant impact on the public health and well-being of populations affected. Negative health impacts can be direct (e.g., injuries) or indirect (e.g., malnutrition and increase in infectious diseases). In the aftermaths of a natural disaster, these health issues are compounded by the damage done to health systems, water and sanitation infrastructure, and the displacement of communities affected. Displacement is quite common after major natural disasters due to increased homelessness. In 2014, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) estimated that 1 298 848 people were left homeless due to natural disasters. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, majority of displaced populations live in temporary crowded shelters with little to no access to water and food especially during the first few days. Such living conditions are ideal for the spread of infectious diseases increasing morbidity and mortality among the displaced populations. There are many infectious diseases known to spread in such crowded environments including diarrheal diseases, measles, bacterial meningitis, acute respiratory diseases, malaria and dengue fever, and tetanus, among others. Consequently, to respond to a natural disaster, public health workers have to treat injuries that require immediate medical attention while also implementing systems to prevent and reduce the spread of infectious diseases.



Natural disasters also cause a huge economic burden. From 2000 to 2009, natural disasters caused $891 billion in damage worldwide (Kellet and Sparks, 2012). The high cost of natural disasters is attributed to their destruction of expensive and essential infrastructure (e.g., roads and buildings). In terms of health and economic losses, low-income countries are disproportionately affected by natural disasters. Even though high-income countries have higher industrial damage when natural disasters occur, the proportion of losses in relation to the gross national product demonstrates a higher financial burden for low-income countries (McDermott et al., 2011). This increases foreign aid dependency for low-income countries since they need additional funding for reconstruction and economic recovery efforts. These challenges illustrate the need to link emergency disaster response efforts to long-term development projects to sustain recovery.


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