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IN CASE OF FLOOD

A flood can devastate homes, commercial buildings, agricultural lands, public goods, and other physical properties. However, the most important things during the flood and after flooding there are also threats to one’s health and safety. diarrhea was found to be most common illness and a major cause of death amongst the population affected by the flood. Prevalent respiratory infection induced by the flood was also cause of death. Sanitation problems and various water-borne disease such as diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, gastroenteritis, typhoid and hepatitis A which are the most common flood-related diseases, especially among the poor and vulnerable, due to lack of access to safe drinking water, medicine and hygienic food. Vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue also common flood-related diseases.

Floodwaters contain disease causing bacteria, dirt, oil, human and animal wastes, and farm and industrial chemicals. They carry away whatever existing on the ground and upstream. Their contact with food items including foodcrops in agricultural lands during flooding can make that food unsafe to eat and hazardous to human health. Power failures caused by floods also damage stored (refrigerated and frozen) food.

Flooding also caused water sources contaminated with pollutants and devastates sanitary toilets. Direct and indirect contact with the contaminants whether through direct food intakes, vector insects such as flies, unclean hands, or dirty plates and utensils, result in waterborne illnesses and life-threatening infection diseases. The pollutants also saturate into the ground water and/or can infiltrate into sanitary sewer lines through the ground. In addition, wastewater treatment plants, if flooded and malfunctioned, can be overloaded with polluted runoff waters and sewage beyond their disposal capacity, resulting into backflows of raw sewage to homes and low lying grounds. Private wells can be also contaminated or damaged severely by floodwaters, while private sewage disposal systems also become a cause of infection and illnesses when they are broken or overflowed
In this manner, unclean drinking and washing water and sanitation, with lack of adequate sewage treatment, can lead to disease outbreaks, e.g. life-threatening cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis A or E

Prolonged rainfall and floods provide new breeding grounds (wet areas and stagnant pools) for mosquitoes and can lead to an increase in the number of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue.

Other flood-related diseases which are not mentioned in the article including the diseases carry out by rats and rodents and dead animals. They are possibly carry viruses, bacteria and parasites that also caused illness or diseases. Leptospirosis, or Weil's disease is a zoonotic bacterial disease associated predominantly with rats. Malaysis’s worst flood disaster in nealy 40 years have killed 15 people, including two who died from Leptospirosis caused by exposure to water contaminated with the urine of rat and others animal.The symptom of leptospirosis include diarrhea, vomiting and kidney or liver problems.

Besides the flood related health problems described above, people are also at risk from skin infections caused of insects or bugs bites, especially in the wet over-crowded emergency shelters. Skin, eyes, nose and ear infections can also caused by direct contact to the flood water contaminated by bacteria, parasites or chemicals especially children who like to play in the dirty flood water.

The way to curb the water-born and vector-born disease is to
practices some basic precautions to prevent possible diseases during and after flooding and to maintain good health during the repercussion of floods. The most important thing is to make sure people access to safe drinking, washing and bathing water and hygienic foods. They should provided with safe drinking water, washing, bathing and sanitation facilities. Water supply should disinfected with enough chlorine to purify drinking water. Vector- born disease can be avoided by fogging of mosquito-proned areas and by using a net in a bed time.