Health Vulnerability of Households in Flooded Communities and Their Adaptation Measures

Abstract

Floods adversely affect community well-being and health. This study aims to assess the present health vulnerability of households to floods in a rural flood-prone area of northeastern Thailand, as well as their adaptation measures. The participants were the representatives of 312 randomly selected households, and data were collected using an interview questionnaire. Health vulnerability was assessed in terms of flood exposure, flood sensitivity, and flood adaptive capacity. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. The results showed that 47.1% of the households had a low level of health vulnerability to flooding, while in 21.2% the level was high. Households had been adapting themselves to cope with the health impacts from flood. Their coping practices included special arrangements for the protection of property, food management, the provision of water supply and waste disposal, the elimination of sources of vector-borne diseases, family health care, the protection of family livelihood, and communication and transportation.

Climate Change–Related Water Disasters’ Impact on Population Health

“…Susceptibility of individuals, communities, and countries was described in many of the articles. Risk factors that increase susceptibility to greater impact from CCRWDs include living in poverty, living in unstable dwellings, and lacking access to health care (Alderman et al, 2012;Bloetscher et al, 2016;Burton et al, 2016;Dressler, Allison, Broach, Smith, & Milsten, 2016;Grabich, Horney, Konrad, & Lobdell, 2016;Khan, Gruebner, & Kraemer, 2014;Lane et al, 2013;Rodriguez-Llanes, Ranjan-Dash, Mukhopadhyay, & Guha-Sapir, 2016;Schmeltz et al, 2013;Srikuta, Inmuong, Inmuong, & Bradshaw, 2015). There is a strong correlation between social and health vulnerability as measured by lack of income, percentage of minority residents, lower educational attainment, lack of English fluency, low take up of medical services, age, and disability status (Bloetscher et al, 2016).…”

“…Males are more susceptible to drowning (the largest cause of mortality from cyclones), and males are most susceptible to dying from cyclones (Doocy, Dick, Daniels, & Kirsch, 2013). Other factors that were associated with susceptibility include being female, being very young or elderly, living with a disability, being an ethnic minorities, lacking fluency in the country's primary language, having a female head of household, and having lower educational attainment (Abbas & Routray, 2014;Alderman et al, 2012;Bloetscher et al, 2016;Burton et al, 2016;Grabich et al, 2016;Khan et al, 2014;Lane et al, 2013;Rodriguez-Llanes et al, 2016;Schmeltz et al, 2013;Srikuta et al, 2015). Children are more susceptible to injuries, diarrheal diseases, and respiratory infections (Phung et al, 2014).…”

Health vulnerability to flood-induced risks of households in flood-prone informal settlements in the Coastal City of Mombasa, Kenya

“…During a flood, environmental hazards expose households to altered conditions which also change many determinants of well-being, including health. As a result of these changes, household vulnerability to flooding is revealed (Hashizume et al 2008: Srikuta et al 2015. Household demographics, conditions of housing, sanitation and other environmental factors may predispose different households to different levels of health vulnerability to flooding.…”

“…Vulnerability is a dynamic status and requires to be understood within different contexts (Steinfu¨hrer et al 2009). According to Srikuta et al (2015), "understanding health vulnerability to flooding at household level can help to strengthen household and community public health responses to a flood and lead to the development of preventive action to minimize suffering by increasing the adaptive capacity of households and the wider community" (p. 744). There has been no recent empirical study of health vulnerability at the household level in Mombasa City, and specifically, none focusing on flood-prone informal settlements in the city.…”

“…Rayhan (2010) employs a similar approach which uses vulnerability as expected poverty to estimate vulnerability to floods of households in Bangladesh. In the current study, household's health vulnerability is looked at in the narrowest sense of the degree to which households are unable to cope with the adverse health outcomes and health impacts due to flood (Srikuta et al 2015). This is taken to have the three components: flood exposure, flood sensitivity and flood adaptive capacity.…”