Nutrition
Jan de Boer, Marcel Dubouloz in Handbook of Disaster Medicine, 2020
Major disasters, whether due to forces of Nature or of human origin, commonly bring impairment of food supplies and consumption, and consequent suffering, poor health and high rates of morbidity and mortality. Famine – defined as a late stage of food scarcity causing significant excess mortality – often stems from drought, severe flooding or agricultural catastrophes, but also from war, civil conflicts and other causes of displacement of populations. Malnutrition, in its many tragic forms, all too often characterises emergency situations, especially long-lasting ones. General malnutriton rates are often very high, affecting 90% or more of the population with 10% or more of children below 5 years being severely, acutely malnourished. Micronutrient malnutrition is equally ubiquitous, and devastating in its consequences.
Health impact of disasters on older people
Emily Ying Yang Chan in Disaster Public Health and Older People, 2019
A famine is an extreme form of food crisis. A food crisis is a “combination of drought, rising food prices, poverty, natural disasters, conflicts, disease, and complex emergencies” (World Vision Hong Kong, n.d.). When food crises continue and reach certain measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger, they can develop into a famine. According to the United Nations (2011), a location is defined as being affected by famine when “at least 20% of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope; acute malnutrition rates exceed 30%, and the death rate exceeds two persons per day per 10,000 persons”. It involves a regional failure of food production or supply sufficient to cause a marked increase in disease and mortality due to a severe lack of nutrition and necessitates emergency intervention, usually at an international level (Cox, 1981). Famines can result from natural disasters. However, because many underlying causes of famines are related to food distribution, management of food prices and regulation of other economic activities, they are now considered as man-made disasters. In addition, famines are often accompanied by an economic and social collapse of the community.
Famines
Bill Pritchard, Rodomiro Ortiz, Meera Shekar in Routledge Handbook of Food and Nutrition Security, 2016
Why do famines occur, and what is their impact? On the most basic level, the direct impact of a subsistence crisis is expressed in measures of food availability decline (crops and livestock production, market provisioning), human suffering (mortality, health and disease), and demographic adaptive strategies (marriage, fertility, migration). On a second level, we need to understand formal and informal collective coping strategies. How do local populations, as a group, cope with the sudden stress of a (possible) hunger crisis, and how do local, regional, and national authorities react to this threat of famine? We differentiate between collective risk management strategies for coping with shocks and for mitigating risk, and public actor interventions. Short-term and long-term collective strategies include adaptations of demographic behaviour and consumption patterns, intensification and diversification of the use of family labour, selling assets and land, and reconfiguring relief, credit and protection systems. Public interventions range from direct intervention and public investment to market regulation and revised entitlement structures.
Drought-related cholera outbreaks in Africa and the implications for climate change: a narrative review
Published in Pathogens and Global Health, 2022
Gina E. C. Charnley, Ilan Kelman, Kris A. Murray
Relying on agriculture can become tenuous during droughts, reducing food security through crop failures and livestock losses [17,28]. For example, during 1991–1992, 370,000 cattle were lost in Zimbabwe, crop production in Namibia fell by 70% and Botswana’s maize crop failed [28]. This leads to subsequent famine and malnutrition, decreasing host immune response and heightening the risk of cholera and other infectious diseases [26,36]. Drought and subsequent water scarcity lead to using different sources of food and water. For example, in Mali millet gruel is commonly eaten and acidified with curdled goat milk to prevent contamination, but in times of drought goat milk is often not available, along with several other acidifying ingredients such as lemon, tamarind, and vinegar. Famine foods are also often cooked less to preserve fuel [17]. The lack of available food increases reliance on roadside food vendors [30], which have been shown to increase cholera transmission in other outbreaks [37], often due to poor food hygiene practices, poor regulation, and no enforcement of bans.
Exploring Cuba: Mental Health, Art, and Cultural Insights
Published in Art Therapy, 2018
In 1960 the United States cut ties with Cuba and U.S. imports to the country ended. Because Cuba is not a self-sufficient producer of many necessary goods, the country turned to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for aid. Nearly 30 years later with the dissolution of the USSR in 1989, Cuba was thrown into economic crisis. In this time known as the período especial (the special period), Castro enforced a drastic austerity program. Industry was forced almost to a standstill and food became so limited that the crisis reached famine proportions (Botella-Rodriguez, 2011). Out of necessity, Cubans found renewed and newly innovative ways to sustain their society. Organic sustainable agricultural societies were created, along with a focus on health and lifestyle. The Cuban government started a standard rationing program for all citizens, which today includes rice, beans, sugar, eggs, and potatoes that can be purchased at a nominal price (G. Bianca, personal communication, January 2017).
Facts and ideas from anywhere
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2018
Charles C. Mann, writing recently in The Smithsonian Magazine, demonstrated that Ehrlich was quite wrong in his predictions.17 In 1970, the world's population was approximately 3 billion and the death toll from famines worldwide annually was nearly 20 million. Today, the world's population is over 7 billion and the number of people suffering famine worldwide is no more than 1 million. When The Population Bomb appeared in 1968, approximately one-fourth of the world population was hungry. Today, 10% are. People are surviving because they learned how to do things differently. They developed and adopted new agricultural techniques, improved seeds, and produced high-intensity fertilizers and drip irrigation. Ehrlich believed that today's reduction in hunger is but a temporary reprieve—a lucky generation. Population will fall, he stated today, either when people choose to dramatically reduce birth rates or when there is a massive die off because ecosystems can no longer support us. His viewpoint, although once common, is now more of an outlier.
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