Health vulnerability assessment of flooded communities near Kaeng Lawa, Khon Kaen

Abstract

This descriptive study aims to assess health vulnerability of six flooded communities near Kaeng Lawa, Khon Kaen. The study was employed 3 methods for data collection; the first method was done by consultation meeting with community representatives which purpose to evaluate their community health vulnerability score from the past flood by using the community health vulnerability assessment form. The second method was done by reviewing annual flood related diseases report of those communities in the past 5 years. The last method was done by key informant interview which consisted of six community leaders and a director of Ban Lawa district health promotion hospital. Health vulnerability of flooded community assessment considered from three linked components; flood exposure, flood sensi-tivity and flood adaptive capacity. The result indicated that most of the study flooded communities had medium level for health vulnerability. The community health outcome which was the most sensitive to flood was skin diseases. The community health determinants that sensitive to flood were habitat and farm location, waste management, water supply availability and health status. The flooded communities those who had well adapted to the flood impacts, these could help reduce the risk from flood according to the decreased of community health vulnerability to flood. Therefore, those communities that faced frequently flood should received the adaptive capacity building and improvement to deal with the flood impacts.