Sena Aderita, Ebi Kristie L, Freitas Carlos, Corvalan Carlos, Barcellos Christovam
Institute of Scientific and Technological Communication and Information in Health (ICICT), Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
PLoS One. 2017 Jul 25;12(7):e0181394. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181394. eCollection 2017.
Brazil has a large semiarid region, which covers part of 9 states, over 20% of the 5565 municipalities in the country and at 22.5 million persons, 12% of the country's population. This region experiences recurrent and extended droughts and is characterized by low economic development, scarcity of natural resources including water, and difficult agricultural and livestock production. Local governments and communities need easily obtainable tools to aid their decision making process in managing risks associated with drought.
To inform decision-making at the level of municipalities, we investigated factors contributing to the health risks of drought. We used education and poverty indicators to measure vulnerability, number of drought damage evaluations and historical drought occurrences as indicators of hazard, and access to water as an indicator of exposure, to derive a drought disaster risk index.
Indicators such as access to piped water, illiteracy and poverty show marked differences in most states and, in nearly all states, the living conditions of communities in the semiarid region are worse than in the rest of each state. There are municipalities at high drought disaster risk in every state and there are a larger number of municipalities at higher risks from the center to the north of the semiarid region.
Understanding local hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities provides the means to understand local communities' risks and develop interventions to reduce them. In addition, communities in these regions need to be empowered to add their traditional knowledge to scientific tools, and to identify the actions most relevant to their needs and realities.
巴西有大片半干旱地区，覆盖9个州的部分地区，占全国5565个市的20%以上，涉及2250万人，占全国人口的12%。该地区旱灾频发且持续时间长，其特点是经济发展水平低、水资源等自然资源匮乏，农业和畜牧业生产困难。地方政府和社区需要易于获取的工具来协助他们在管理与干旱相关的风险时进行决策。
为了为市级层面的决策提供信息，我们调查了导致干旱健康风险的因素。我们使用教育和贫困指标来衡量脆弱性，将干旱损失评估次数和历史干旱发生情况作为灾害指标，将获得水的情况作为暴露指标，以得出干旱灾害风险指数。
诸如获得自来水的情况、文盲率和贫困率等指标在大多数州都有显著差异，而且几乎在所有州，半干旱地区社区的生活条件都比各州其他地区差。每个州都有旱灾风险高的市，并且从半干旱地区的中部到北部，有更多风险较高的市。
了解当地的灾害、暴露情况和脆弱性为理解当地社区的风险以及制定降低风险的干预措施提供了途径。此外，需要赋予这些地区的社区权力，使其能够将传统知识融入科学工具，并确定与其需求和实际情况最相关的行动。
