| Author | Ahmad, Junaid |
| Call Number | AIT Diss. no.DM-19-01 |
| Subject(s) | Earthquakes--Health aspects--Pakistan
Health risk assessment--Pakistan
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| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management, School of Environment, Resources and Development-School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | In the recent past, the Hindu Kush earthquake in October 2015 was the deadlicst earthquake recorded in Pakistan, which according to the National Disaster Management Authority resulted in 267 deaths with 1,856 people infured and 11,389 houses damaged. This research aimed to assess earthquake-induced public health risks in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa area of Pakistan, while taking into consideration the event of October 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has six divisions and twenty-eight districts. The earthquake hit the whole province and instigated life losses and infrastructure damage throughout the province. But five districts were affected severely. The rescarch was undertaken in the most severely affected districts ofKhyber Pakhtunkhwa. The study implemented mix-method study design. A cross-sectional survey was carried out in the KPK province of Pakistan. To assess the earthquake-induced health risk at community and household level, a total of 386 sample size was determined using Yamane (1967) formula, and an intervicwer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data at the household level. The analysis of the data about the gender of the household head reveals that the patriarchal system is the dominant and prevalent system in the study area. The Mean age of the injured persons during the earthquake was 27.60 years, while the lowest and highest age in years were 0.4 and 93 respectively. The most commonly reported injuries fell into the unspecified category (20%) followed by injuries to knees and lower leg (15%). The data analysis also revealed that not all the indicators of public health get impacted as a result of the earthquake. The indicators related to health care services such as ante-natal care, post-natal care, infant immunisation and immunisation of children under five years did not show any significant variation in pre & post-earthquake situation. While, the indicators related to vector-borne diseases (malaria, and leishmaniasis), blood-borne diseases (hepatitis C), communicable diseases (tuberculosis) showed significant variation after the earthquake. This study also concluded that Pakistan's disaster management plan completely lack the very crucial components of public health emergencies and response. Also, the disaster management authorities and the departments of public health have no coordination schema in place. The research in this dissertation has attempted to contribute to disaster health risk reduction by providing a baseline assessment and giving an insight that what domains of public health may have high risks of devastating impacts in the aftermath of an carthquake. The other significant contribution of this dissertation is the selection and highlighting of key public health indicators for rapid need assessment in post-earthquake scenarios. Furthermore, this research also proposed a disaster-health-risk reduction frameNork, which propose the integration of public health interventions and disaster risk reduction strategies. This particular framework can be used to upgrade the existing disaster risk reduction plans which will contribute a lot to mitigate the impacts of disasters in general and earthquakes in specific. |
| Year | 2019 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development + School of Engineering and Technology |
| Department | Department of Development and Sustainability (DDS) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management (DPMM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Ahmad, Mokbul Morshed, |
| Examination Committee(s) | Routray, Jayant Kumar;Chatterjee, Joyee S. |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Higher Education Comission (HEC), Pakistan;AIT Fellowship |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2019 |
