Mortality risks associated with flood events

Floods account for 44% of all global natural disasters1 and are responsible for about half of all deaths resulting from such events. Currently, 1.81 billion people (23% of the world’s population) are directly exposed to the threat of severe flooding.2In a linked paper (doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-075081), Yang and colleagues assessed the impact of exposure to flood events on mortality across 761 communities in 34 countries worldwide.3 Through this extensive time series analysis involving a total of 47.6 million deaths, the authors found compelling evidence of heightened mortality after exposure to floods, with effects persisting for 50-60 days. Specifically, they found cumulative risk increases of 2.1% (95% confidence interval 0.6% to 3.6%) for all cause mortality, 2.6% (0.5% to 4.7%) for cardiovascular mortality, and 4.9% (0.8% to 9.2%) for respiratory mortality.Flood associated effects included increases in deaths from all causes not just deaths caused directly by flooding. This is one of the study’s…
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