Growing impact of energy/food/water insecurities on public health
Public health systems may face design challenges due to vulnerabilities associated with possible disruptions to power supplies, telecommunications or availability of sufficient food and water. This may increase costs or mean acceptance of greater risks of system failure.
In many regions of the world it is common for emergency systems to fail to meet basic needs of populations in the event of public health crises. Hurricane Katrina revealed this can afflict entire cities in high-income countries. The prospects of breakdown of large-scale systems that deal with emergencies, and their public health dimensions, may provoke severe political backlash, huge increases in expenditure to try to maintain resilience, or a search for more self-reliant and bottom-up solutions. We could even see the development of Medecin sans Frontieres- and International Rescue-type operations within the developed world (already present in Greece): mobile, multi-skilled, rapid-response public health and disaster-relief teams.
Note: Other disasters from system failure may be triggered by other natural events and/or human failures, compounded by information gaps in risk management. The main casualties to date in the Fukushima disaster were evacuees and there is some evidence that these will be more acute due to failure to take into account the pattern of wind-blown radionuclides when organising mass evacuation.
Sources or references
- See http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=2595 for long-term prospects.
- Among many studies and reviews of contemporary insecurities in the developed world, and their impacts on PH, "Household Hardships, Public Programs, and Their Associations with the Health and Development of Very Young Children: Insights from Children’s HealthWatch," Journal of Applied Research on Children (2012) at http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/childrenatrisk/vol3/iss1/4/
Some of the information in this section is provided by stakeholders and expert groups, and does not necessarily represent the views of the CfWI.
