Cyclone exposure and mortality risk of children under 5 years old: An observational study in 34 low- and middle-income countries

Yichen Guo, Yixiang Zhu, Cheng He, Ya Gao, Lu Zhou, Jovine Bachwenkizi, Haidong Kan and Renjie Chen

PLOS Medicine, 2025, vol. 22, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: Background: Climate change has exacerbated the frequency, intensity, and impacts of extreme weather events (EWEs), such as tropical cyclones. However, the increasing impact of tropical cyclones on child mortality, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), remains understudied. Methods and findings: Utilizing individual-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, we conducted a sibling-matched case-control study to assess the impact of cyclone exposure over the past 3 months on under-five mortality. The study included 100,798 under-five deaths and 247,445 controls across 34 LMICs from 1993 to 2021. After adjusting for key meteorological and temporal confounders and maternal age, significant positive associations were observed between under-five deaths and cyclone exposure over the past 3 months before death (odds ratio [OR]: 1.038, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.002, 1.075; p = 0.041). Specifically, the strongest effects were observed in the first month before death (OR: 1.101, 95% CI: 1.039, 1.166; p

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004735 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/fil ... 04735&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pmed00:1004735

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004735

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Medicine from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosmedicine ().