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Medical Consultations After Typhoon Haiyan in a Field Hospital in the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

Julita Gil Cuesta Open the ORCID record for Julita Gil Cuesta [Opens in a new window] ,
Joris Adriaan Frank van Loenhout ,
Maria Lourdes de Lara Banquesio ,
Masniza Mustaffa  and
Debarati Guha-Sapir
Julita Gil Cuesta*
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Institute of Health and Society - Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium
Joris Adriaan Frank van Loenhout
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Institute of Health and Society - Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium
Maria Lourdes de Lara Banquesio
Affiliation:
Ormoc District Hospital, Ormoc, Philippines
Masniza Mustaffa
Affiliation:
Mercy Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur
Debarati Guha-Sapir
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Institute of Health and Society - Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Julita Gil Cuesta, Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Institute of Health and Society - Université catholique de Louvain, Clos Chapelle aux Champs 30, 1200 Brussels, Belgium (e-mail: giljulita@gmail.com).
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Abstract

Introduction and Objectives:

Typhoon Haiyan partially destroyed the Ormoc District Hospital in the Philippines. A field hospital was established to replace its outpatient department for 5 weeks. We investigated the reasons for medical consultation in the field hospital.

Methods:

We described the consultations by sex, age, week, and diagnosis according to the Surveillance in Post-Extreme Emergencies and Disasters system. We compared the number and proportion of upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) with a control season in 2014.

Results:

We included 6785 consultations, 55.9% from women. The majority of consultations were communicable diseases (88.2%) followed by noncommunicable (7.1%) and injuries (5.6%). Males suffered more often from injuries than women (66.0% vs 34.0%). Consultations due to injuries decreased from 10.0% in the first to 2.9% in the last week. The most frequent diagnosis over the study period was acute respiratory infections (ARIs) (73.1%), of which 83.0% were children. The number of daily URTIs was higher than in a similar 2014 period.

Conclusions:

ARI was the most prevalent diagnosis. We recommend ARI treatments being fully accessible after such a disaster. During the first week, injury prevention should focus on adult men. Studies after natural disasters should include control periods to better understand disease distribution, ultimately improving the prioritization in disasters.

Keywords

cyclonic stormsmobile health unitsoutpatientsnatural disasters
Type
Brief Report
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 34 - 38
Copyright
© 2019 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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References

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