The Effect of Seasonal Floods on Health: Analysis of Six Years of National Health Data and Flood Maps

Dell D. Saulnier, Claudia Hanson, Por Ir, Helle Mölsted Alvesson and Johan Von Schreeb
Additional contact information
Dell D. Saulnier: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden
Claudia Hanson: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden
Por Ir: National Institute of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Helle Mölsted Alvesson: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden
Johan Von Schreeb: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: There is limited knowledge on the effect of seasonal flooding on health over time. We quantified the short- and long-term effects of floods on selected health indicators at public healthcare facilities in 11 districts in Cambodia, a flood-prone setting. Counts of inpatient discharge diagnoses and outpatient consultations for diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, skin infections, injuries, noncommunicable diseases and vector-borne diseases were retrieved from public healthcare facilities for each month between January 2008 and December 2013. Flood water was mapped by month, in square kilometers, from satellite data. Poisson regression models with three lag months were constructed for the health problems in each district, controlled for seasonality and long-term trends. During times of flooding and three months after, there were small to moderate increases in visits to healthcare facilities for skin infections, acute respiratory infections, and diarrhea, while no association was seen at one to two months. The associations were small to moderate, and a few of our results were significant. We observed increases in care seeking for diarrhea, skin infections, and acute respiratory infections following floods, but the associations are uncertain. Additional research on previous exposure to flooding, using community- and facility-based data, would help identify expected health risks after floods in flood-prone settings.

Keywords: floods; diarrhea; acute respiratory infections; skin infections; injuries; healthcare facilities; disasters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/665/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/4/665/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:4:p:665-:d:139399

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().