Impacts of typhoon and heavy rain disasters on mortality and infectious diarrhea hospitalization in South Korea

Abstract

Several studies for health impacts of natural disasters have not been comprehensive with respect to disaster type and areas, nor quantitative. The aim of our study is to quantitatively examine the associations between disasters and human health in South Korea. This study considered “special disasters” that occurred from 2003 to 2009 in seven metropolitan cities and nine provinces in South Korea. First, we completed health impact counts in both disaster periods and reference periods. We then calculated the rate ratios between health impact counts in these two periods. Mortality is estimated to be higher in the case of typhoons, whereas morbidity is estimated to be higher in heavy rain disasters. The difference in health impacts of typhoons and heavy rain may be explained by the difference in meteorological exposure patterns. Consequentially, we suggest the development of properly adaptive plans against the influence of future natural disasters on human health.

Keywords:

• death
• diarrhea
• disaster
• heavy rain
• typhoon

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the “Development of Climate-Change Health Impact Assessment and Adaptation Technologies” project of the Korea Environment Institute, funded by the Eco-Innovation, Ministry of Environment, South Korea (#412-111-001). Ho Kim was partially supported by the Global Research Lab (#K2-10-04-00-006-10-A05-00-007-1-0) through the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. Hospitalization data were obtained from the National Health Insurance Corporation.