Learning from disasters to save lives every day in Pakistan

摘要

Pakistan faces a challenging array of complex humanitarian crises. Political instability, conflict, entrenched poverty,. and natural disasters are all too common and devastating. Threats to public health, particularly after large-scale disasters such as the earthquake in 2005 and flooding in 2010, have been well publicised.12 However, there is a striking lack of evidence for a direct negative effect of disasters on major health indicators in Pakistan. Post-disaster disease epidemics have been successfully averted and health service indicators have even improved.Although it might seem intuitive that ongoing instability and frequent natural disasters negatively affect health outcomes, this is not necessarily the case. Nepal, for example, with far fewer resources per person than Pakistan, has achieved improved health indicators in the face of humanitarian disasters and unstable governance.