Floods and Health in Gambella region, Ethiopia: An ... - lumes

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human resource and infrastructures even when it is compared with other regions in Ethiopia (Young, 1999). 1.1. OBJECTIVES The objective of this study is to assess the strength and weakness of coping mechanism to deal with flood health risk in Gambella region, Ethiopia. Specific questions to address the above objectives are: 1. What efforts are being made to cope with floods? 2. What are the strengths and weakness of the coping strategies? 3. What changes are needed in the current strategy in a sustainability perspective? 1.2. Scope and Limitations This paper concentrates on coping mechanism to flood related health risk rather than health impact of flooding. However, the paper gives background information on the major health impact of flooding in Ethiopia. Even though economic loss, social disruption and damage to agriculture caused by flooding can directly or indirectly affect the coping mechanisms to flood related health risk, this paper does not address them in depth. Education, another important factor in reducing the health impact of flooding is not fully addressed in this study. While acknowledging that global climate change can affect future flooding, this paper does not discuss it. 8
1.3. BACK GROUND 1.3.1 Types and cause of Floods in Ethiopia Ethiopia has a lot of rugged and mountainous topography with altitudes that range 4650 meter above sea level to 420 meters below sea level (Environmental Protection Authority, 2003). The wide variation in elevation means that various climatic conditions exist in Ethiopia. The rainfall also varies from place to place it reaches at average 2400mm/year in the south west and not greater than 150mm/year in the northern part (Environmental Protection Authority, 2003). While other parts of the country have suffered from limited rainfall, other parts of the country have suffered from heavy floods due to the high rain in high land parts of the country. Flooding is common in Ethiopia during rain season between June and September and the major type of flooding which Ethiopia is experiencing are; Flash flood and river floods (FDPPA, 2006). Flash floods are mainly linked with isolated and localized intense rain fall. It is a short duration event caused by high peak discharge (Few, 2006). The basic and aggravating cause for flash floods are intensity, duration and distribution of rainfall, steep slopes, sedimentation of rivers channels, absence of vegetation, poor soil infiltration capacity, failure of hydrologic (dam, reservoir, etc) structures, sudden release of water from dams, and landslides (Bekele, 1997). This type of flood could pose a big damage to human life and property because they occur suddenly with very high speed (Greenough et al, 2001). There were flash floods in many parts of Ethiopia at different times. An illustrative example of flash floods is the flood that occurred in Dire-Dawa in 2006 which displaced 9,956 people and killed 256 (FDPPA, 2007). River flood is the overflow of rivers from their banks and extend to low lying areas as a result of intense rainfall or a reduction of the capacity of the river (Douben, 2006). It usually occurs in low land parts of Ethiopia as a result of heavy rains in high land parts of the country. These types of floods build up slowly and the magnitude depends on many factors such as size of the catchments, the intensity of rainfall and amount of precipitation that fall into the water shed and tributaries, topography, the presence and absence of vegetation, anthropogenic activity in the catchments area, drainage basin (Bonacci et al, 2008). According to FDPPA (2006) flood prone areas in Ethiopia are the following: “areas in Oromia and Afar Regional States that constitute the mid and downstream plains of the Awash 9
Page 1 and 2: Floods and Health in Gambella regio
Page 3 and 4: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am most grateful
Page 5 and 6: List of Figures Figure 1: Flood Pro
Page 7: 1. INTRODUCTION Floods are known as
Page 11 and 12: 1.3.2 Health Impact of Flooding The
Page 13 and 14: In addition, severe damage to hospi
Page 15 and 16: Animal husbandry is the main econom
Page 17 and 18: 2.2 Data collection and Data Analys
Page 19 and 20: The flood disaster management seque
Page 21 and 22: 3.3.1 Structural measures From dire
Page 23 and 24: problem in collecting the data from
Page 25 and 26: 4. Discussion Lack of flood-specifi
Page 27 and 28: Regional government of Gambella has
Page 29 and 30: 5. Recommendations and Conclusion 5
Page 31 and 32: 6. REFERENCE Ahern, M., Kovats, R.,
Page 33 and 34: Gambella Region Disaster Prevention
Page 35 and 36: Pan America Health Organization, (2
Page 37 and 38: 7. APPENDIX Appendix 1 Table 2: sho
Page 39 and 40: 21. If no what do you use?.........
Page 41 and 42: 1. Is there specific policies relat

Floods and Health in Gambella region, Ethiopia: An ... - lumes

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