El Niño conditions persisting during the 2015/16 planting season have caused the worst drought in 35 years in Southern Africa, resulting in a second consecutive failed harvest. This has created severe food shortages and compounded existing vulnerabilities. Since July 2016, Namibia and Botswana have... declared national drought emergencies, in addition to the declarations made earlier by Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Madagascar issued a letter of solidarity with the SADC Appeal, and Mozambique has maintained a red alert in affected areas.
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J Infect Dis. (2012) 206 (suppl. 1): S61-S67
Influenza data gaps in sub-Saharan Africa include incidence, case fatality, seasonal patterns, and associations with prevalent disorders. The authors found that the burden of influenza was small during 2007–2010 in this paediatric hospital in Kenya. In...fluenza A virus subtype H3N2 predominated, and 2009 pandemic influenza A virus subtype H1N1 had little impact
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A “catastrophic” combination of drought and communities’ declining resilience has left an estimated 2.3 million people facing severe acute food insecurity – up from an estimate of 1.7 million people a month ago.
Communities across southern Africa have been affected by drought since late 2...018.
This year, large parts of southern and western Zambia received their lowest seasonal rainfall totals since at least 1981, the base year from which normal rainfall is benchmarked. At the same time, northern and eastern parts of the country were affected by flash floods and waterlogging, resulting in poor harvests.
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The devastating impacts of the 2015–16 El Niño will be felt well into 2017. This crisis was predicted, yet overall, the response has been too little too late. The looming La Niña event may further hit communities that are already deeply vulnerable. To end this cycle of failure, there is an urgen...t need for humanitarian action where the situation is already dire, to prepare for La Niña later this year, to commit to comprehensive new measures to build communities’ resilience, and to mobilize global action to address climate change which is creating a ‘new normal’ of higher temperatures, drought and unpredictable growing seasons.
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The floods caused by the Tropical Cyclone IDAI has affected 3 million people in the Republics of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe leaving 839 people dead, and this figure continued to rise as the rains stopped and water subsided. To date, over 201,476 people (Table 1) have been displaced and about 31...7 camps established. A total of 2,347 people have been reported injured and over 300 people are still missing in the affected countries.
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Recently, Sri Lanka has been impacted by multiple natural disasters. Sri Lanka experienced a landslide in October 2014, and flooding in December 2014.8 Sri Lanka withstood the worst drought conditions witnessed in four decades in 2016; the extreme drought conditions extended into 2017 and produced s...ubstantial economic and social effects. The drought was responsible for an increase in national poverty levels, due to reduced cultivation income, especially for rural farmers. ... In May 2017, Sri Lanka experienced continuous rains causing flash floods and extreme devastation. However, despite natural disasters and challenges posed by a complex political environment, Sri Lanka’s financial performance remained largely satisfactory in the first half of 2017.
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The Monitoring Report, which covers the first two months of the response from 25 August to 31 October, highlights the work of the Government of Bangladesh, in cooperation with humanitarian partners who are working to provide relief services for the refugee population and Bangladeshi host communities.... Of the 1.2 million people in need, around half have been reached with assistance. The Report also explains the challenges and gaps that remain. The risk of disease outbreak is high, and the impact of a cyclone or heavy rain would be massive. There is not enough land to provide adequate living conditions for the more than 830,000 refugees that now crowd Cox’s Bazar.
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During the reporting period no significant rainfall was recorded in Cox’s Bazar: this past week brought 29 mm of rain in comparison to 115.25 mm for the previous week. As expected, far fewer weather hazard incidents were recorded in the Rohingya camps: 69 individuals (16 HH) were affected by lands...lide and wind-storm incidents, versus 660 individuals (155 HH) affected the previous week by fire, flood, water-logging, landslide and wind-storm incidents. Taking advantage of the dry weather, relocation of families at high risk of landslide and flood continues; during the last two weeks a total of 963 individuals (236 HH) were relocated to Camp 4 Extension and Camp 20 Extension. Dry weather also allowed for increased risk mitigation activities.
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Torrential rains and the onset of Cyclone Komen triggered severe and widespread floods and landslides in July and August 2015 across 12 out of 14 states and regions in Myanmar. An estimated 1.6 million individuals were recorded as having been temporarily displaced from their homes by the disaster, a...nd 132 lost their lives. Up to 5.2 million people were exposed to the floods and landslides in the 40 most heavily affected townships. Within the 40 most-affected townships, 775,810 individuals have been displaced, accounting for approximately half of the total displaced population.
The Project recognizes that although the major target disaster is cyclones, the methodology of the Project activities to enhance the capacity of EWS, HRD and CBDRM is also applicable to mitigate the damage of floods. By analyzing the results of a survey based on the experience of the Project activities, the Project can contribute to describe tangible lessons learned and future recommendations for the counterpart agencies and disaster management related agencies of the Government of Myanmar.
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While the full extent of Cyclone Ida’s impact is still being assessed, early reports indicate significant damage to infrastructure and livelihoods, with an estimated 3,000km2 of land submerged. Preliminary government reports as of 24 March indicate that more than 58,600 houses have been damaged, i...ncluding 36,747 totally destroyed, 19,733 partially destroyed and 2,184 flooded. More than 500,000 hectares of crops have been damaged, which is expected to significantly increase food insecurity given that the flooding has coincided with the annual harvest season. More than 3,100 schools have been damaged, along with at least 45 health centres.
Nearly 110,000 people remained displaced in more than 130 accommodation centres – mostly schools and other public buildings – in Sofala (90), Manica (26), Zambezia (10) and Tete (4), where humanitarian needs are acute and both the risk of communicable disease outbreaks and protection risks – particularly for women and girls – are high
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Massoda Tonye et al. Malar J (2018) 17:156
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-018-2284-7
Background: In 2011, the demographic and health survey (DHS) in Cameroon was combined with the multiple indicator
cluster survey. Malaria parasitological data were collected, but the survey period did not overl...ap with the high
malaria transmission season. A malaria indicator survey (MIS) was also conducted during the same year, within the
malaria peak transmission season. This study compares estimates of the geographical distribution of malaria parasite
risk and of the effects of interventions obtained from the DHS and MIS survey data.
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The threats posed by climate change to agriculture are now well known. Climate change has already resulted in a negative trend in mean crop yield per decade, and this is likely to continue as the century unfolds. In Africa, 650 million people are currently dependent on rain- fed agriculture and, des...pite progress in the Millennium Development Goals, food and nutrition insecurity remainunacceptably high.
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PNAS | March 4, 2014 | vol. 111 | no. 9
Malaria is an important disease that has a global distribution and significant health burden. The spatial limits of its distribution and seasonal activity are sensitive to climate factors, as well as the local capacity to control the disease. Malaria is also ...one of the few health outcomes that has been modeled by more than one research group and can therefore facilitate the first model intercomparison for health impacts under a future with climate change. We used bias-corrected temperature and rainfall simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate models to compare the metrics of five statistical and dynamical malaria impact models for three future time periods (2030s, 2050s, and 2080s). We evaluated three malaria outcome metrics at global and regional levels: climate suitability, additional population at risk and additional person-months at risk across the model outputs. The malaria projections were based on five different global climate models, each run under four emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways, RCPs) and a single population projection. We also investigated the modeling uncertainty associated with future projections of populations at risk for malaria owing to climate change. Our findings show an overall global net increase in climate suitability and a net increase in the population at risk, but with large uncertainties. The model outputs indicate a net increase in the annual person-months at risk when comparing from RCP2.6 to RCP8.5 from the 2050s to the 2080s. The malaria outcome metrics were highly sensitive to the choice of malaria impact model, especially over the epidemic fringes of the malaria distribution.
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The disruptions in imports, production and the related surge in food prices induced by the current conflict in Ukraine have the potential to worsen the food security situation in the Eastern Africa Region, which is already been impacted by the effect of three consecutive below-normal rainfall season...s.
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Pakistan, one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change, received more than three times its usual rainfall in August 2022. Torrential rains and flash-flooding began in early July 2022, severely damaging living areas, schools and other communal buildings in refugee villages and host ...communities. Unprecedented and unrelenting rainfall and flooding in late August 2022 worsened the already fragile humanitarian situation. Nearly 1,700 people are reported to have died, and over 12,800 were injured, including at least 4,000 children
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A new survey on the impact of the floods in Pakistan on older people reveals that hundreds of lives are needlessly being put at risk due to the decimation of health services and the rise of diseases like malaria and diarrhoea, which can be killers to older people with weaker immune systems.
After five consecutive below-average rains, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is expanding and deepening.
Combined with insecurity and macroeconomic volatility, the impact of the drought on food and nutrition security has been devastating. Across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, an estima...ted 22 million people are now acutely food insecure because of the drought. The malnutrition situation is also critical. Some 5.1 million children across drought-affected areas of the three countries are acutely malnourished in 2023, with dire implications for their health, growth and survival. Concerningly, the upcoming March-May 2023 rains are also forecast to be below-average. Should these rains fail, and humanitarian assistance not be delivered at scale, food insecurity will continue to deteriorate.
Regardless of how the 2023 rains perform, extremely high humanitarian needs will persist through 2023 while a full recovery from a drought of this magnitude will take years. To address the devastating drought-induced hunger and malnutrition across the region, WFP is pursuing an integrated dual track approach; meeting immediate life-saving food and nutritional needs while simultaneously building resilience to extreme climate variability.
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