Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM) in Remote Ethnic Minority Areas of Rural China: The Case of a Flood-Prone Village in Sichuan

Abstract

Remote, rural ethnic-minority communities face greater disaster-related public health risks due to their lack of resources and limited access to health care. The Ethnic Minority Health Project (EMHP) was initiated in 2009 to work with remote, disaster-prone ethnic-minority villages that live in extreme poverty. One of the project’s aims is to develop and evaluate bottom-up health risk reduction efforts in emergency and disaster risk management (Health-EDRM). This article shares project updates and describes field intervention results from the Yi ethnic community of Hongyan village in China’s Sichuan Province, an area that experiences recurrent floods. It was found that 64% of the village respondents had never considered any form of disaster preparation, even with the recurrent flood risks. Health intervention participants showed sustained knowledge retention and were nine times more likely to know the correct composition of oral rehydration solution (ORS) after the intervention. Participants also retained the improved knowledge on ORS and disaster preparedness kit ownership 12 months after the intervention.

Keywords

Disaster preparedness kit / Disaster risk reduction / Ethnic minority / Health emergency and disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) / Oral rehydration solution / Recurrent floods / Rural China

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