Global Health Impacts of Floods: Epidemiologic Evidence

Floods are the most common natural disaster in both developed and developing countries, and they are occasionally of devastating impact, as the floods in China in 1959 and Bangladesh in 1974 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004 show (1). Their impacts on health vary between populations for reasons relating to population vulnerability and type of flood event (2–5). Under future climate change, altered patterns of precipitation and sea level rise are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of floods in many regions of the world (6). In this paper, we review the epidemiologic evidence of flood-related health impacts. The specific objectives were as follows: to summarize and critically appraise evidence of published studies, covering flood events in all regions of the world, and to identify knowledge gaps relevant to the reduction of public health impacts.