Developing world disaster Health research - Present Evidence & future priorities

Considering that 85% of disasters and 95% of disaster-related deaths occur in the developing world, the overwhelming number of casualties has contributed insignificantly to the world's peer-reviewed literature. The existing & available evidence on disasters in peer-reviewed journals about the developing world, was examined for quality and quantity in this systematic review.

The free PubMed database was searched using the MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) terms ‘disasters’, ‘disaster medicine, ‘rescue work’, ‘relief work’ and ‘conflict’ and then refined using the MeSH terms ‘developing country’. The final list of selected manuscripts were analyzed by type of article, level of evidence, theme of the manuscript and topic, author affiliation & region of the study.

Citations using MeSH search terms ‘disasters’, ‘disaster medicine, ‘rescue work’, ‘relief work’ & ‘conflict’ yielded 63,196 results. After these results were refined using the second MeSH term “developing country”, 438 articles were retained. Less than 1% (0.69%) citations in PubMed dealt with developing country disasters. Half of the manuscripts (46.5%) were found to be original research articles (36.1%) or reviews (10.4%), while more than a quarter (29.5%) were commentaries. 97.4% (149/153) of all ‘original research articles’ were Level IV or V evidence. A fifth (20.3%) of the authors of all manuscripts on developing world disasters were from the developing world (82/404); Predominant themes (29.1%) were missions, healthcare provision and humanitarian aid during the acute phase of developing world disasters.

Less than 1% of all disaster-related publications are about developing world disasters. Also, the developed world, authors four-fifths of the articles about developing world disasters, and contributes the predominant perspective. Aid for sustaining long-term disaster research may be a more useful investment in mitigating future disasters, than short-term humanitarian aid missions to the developing world.