specify what type of responsibilities is bear by district, block and village in India in any type of disaster?
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Answer:
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, internationally reported disasters in 2002 affected 608 million people worldwide and killed 24,532—well below the preceding decade's annual average mortality of 62,000 (IFRC 2003). Many more were affected by myriad local disasters that escaped international notice.
Disaster has multiple and changing definitions. The essential common element of those definitions is that disasters are unusual public health events that overwhelm the coping capacity of the affected community. This concept precludes the universal adoption of a threshold number of casualties or victims. What would be a minor incident in a large country may constitute a major disaster in a small isolated island state. Not only are "quantitative definitions of disasters unworkably simplistic" as noted by Alexander (1997, 289), but when based on the economic toll or the number of deaths, they are also misleading with regard to the immediate health needs of the survivors or their long-term impact on the affected country.
Classification of Disasters
In the early 1970s, a series of well-publicized disasters (the civil war and resulting famine in Biafra, the cyclone in Bangladesh, and the earthquake in Peru) triggered the scientific interest of the international public health community.
Disasters can be classified as natural disasters, technological disasters, or complex emergencies. The latter include civil wars and conflicts. These classifications are arbitrary and refer to the immediate trigger—a natural phenomenon or hazard (biological, geological, or climatic); a technologically originated problem; or a conflict. In reality, all disasters are complex events stemming from the interaction of external phenomena and the vulnerability of man and society.
The human responsibility in so-called natural disasters is well acknowledged. The term natural disaster remains commonly used and should not be understood as denying a major human responsibility for the consequences.
Disaster Terminology
The following definitions are adapted from those proposed by the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), a United Nations (UN) body established to sustain the efforts of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR 2004) and the WHO World Health Report 2002 (WHO 2002):
Hazards are potentially damaging physical events, which may cause loss of life, injury, or property damage. Each hazard is characterized by its location, intensity, frequency, and probability.
Vulnerability is a set of conditions resulting from physical, social, economic, and environmental factors that increase the susceptibility of a community to the effects of hazards. A strong coping capacity—that is, the combination of all the strengths and resources available within a community—will reduce its vulnerability.
Risk is the probability of harmful consequences (health burden) or economic losses resulting from the interactions between natural or human-induced hazards and vulnerable or capable conditions. In a simplified manner, risk is expressed by the following function:
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A public health approach to disaster risk management will aim to decrease the vulnerability by adopting prevention and mitigation measures to reduce the physical impact and to increase the coping capacity and preparedness of the health sector and community, in addition to providing traditional emergency care (response) once the disaster has occurred.
Distribution and Risk Factors
Health and relative economic losses of natural disasters disproportionately affect developing countries (Alexander 1997; UN/ISDR 2004). More than 90 percent of natural disaster–related deaths occur in developing countries. Even though the economic losses are far greater in industrial countries, the percentage of losses in relation to gross national product (GNP) in developing countries far exceeds that percentage in industrial countries (figure 61.1). At an individual level, a sudden reduction of US$5,000 from an annual income of US$50,000 is worrisome; however, the ongoing loss of US$50 from a monthly income of US$100 may be catastrophic.