ESTIMATING PUBLIC HEALTH VULNERABILITY IN FLOOD PRONE AREAS OF PUNJAB, PAKISTAN AN APPLICATION OF ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP)

Abstract

In global perspective, climate change severely influenced developed and developing economies owing to higher occurrence of natural disasters such as floods, drought, earthquakes, heat waves and landslides and tropical cyclones. Pakistan ranked world fifth most higher climate change affected country of the world having higher frequently of floods disasters. Increasing erratic rains and glacier melting owing to higher temperature consider responsible for increasing frequency of riverine and flash flooding. Increasing flooding causing rising livelihood issues more particularly the health vulnerability specifically the communities residing in neighboring of river areas. The objective of this research work is estimating the public health vulnerability in flood prone areas of Punjab, Pakistan. This study used the multistage random sampling approach for collection the data of 240 household from flood prone district Vehari. In data collection procedure, a well-developed pretested questioner with all relevant information of respondents and study was applied. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied for assigning significance of different indicators regarding household characteristics and STATA software was applied to estimate vulnerability status of study area with various indicators. Household indicators include such as water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) and hospital facilities, access to relief, disaster state and adaptation strategies. Estimates of the study indicated as these six indicators of the study significantly contribute to public health vulnerability. Flooding conditions in the study area consider most influencing factors followed by wash facilities, hospital facilities, access to relief and adoption strategies availability. In research area, among six selected union councils, two union councils Sahuka as most vulnerable while 291EB union councils consider moderate health vulnerable. Sahuka as most vulnerable owing to confronting regular floods, inaccessibility of relief and low socioeconomic status while 291EB union councils is moderately health vulnerability because of substantial measures of disaster risk reduction and frequent occurrence of flood disasters. Disaster management need to focus on reactive and proactive approaches which can immensely influence community health. Findings of this research can facilitate to detect gap in current public health system in vulnerable area and can undertake influential disaster risk reduction measures according to build resilient and health community.