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Explore types, trends, and consequences of disasters, historical perspectives on food crisis interventions, and the 6 phases of disaster response.
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Food and Nutrition Surveillance and Response in Emergencies Session 6 Types, Trends and Consequences of Disasters/Emergencies
Session overview • Overview of disasters • Types and trends of disasters • Consequences of disasters • Phases of disasters
Definition of Disaster • Disaster • A serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own reseources ---unusual events, not part of ‘normal life’. • Disasters happen when the forces of a hazard exceed theability of a community to cope on its own ==> not all communities are at risk of every disaster though every community is at risk of some particular disaster. • Regardless of the cause, disasters have the following characteristics • Agreat or sudden misfortune • Beyond the normal capacity of the affected community to cope, unaided • The interface between vulnerable human conditions and a natural hazard.
History of food and nutrition in emergency relief • Food & Nutrition in Emergencies– thru’out history • The Old Testament (Joseph) • Europe’s famine of 1817 • Protracted conflict columns of refugees • eastwards into Russia or westwards to the Americas • 000s of death from typhus, exposure and starvation. • Multiple harvest failures + rapid erosion of purchasing power among the poor (1813 –16). • + weather changes (El Nino “warm event” droughts and floods (volcanic dust (Indonesia) => 1816 – summerless yr. • “unmanageable proportions” of beggars
Public interventions • Explained divergence in mortality rates • Poor public health conditions (Switzerland, Ireland) • Irish famine arose from “low conditions of bodily health arising from the deficiency and bad quality of the food”. • Lower epidemic disease and related famine mortality I countries with established public health investments and local administration (Netherlands, England). • creative approaches to famine relief intervention • Mixture of food supply and price control policies coupled with various direct transfer-based interventions stabilized food prices when imports were adequate. • Food supply control (prohibited grain exports) • Injection of public food stocks into key markets at subsidized prices. • Labor-intensive public works (development projects) workers paid in kind (food) --- UK (Poor Employment Act of 1817 => New Poor Law of 1842 institutionalized public works as welfare assistance).
Phases of disasters • There are 6 phases of disasters each with distinct characteristics: • Pre-emergency phase • Impact and flight phase • Acute emergency phase • Post-emergency phase • Repatriation phase • Rehabilitation or Reconstruction phase