Medical Consequences of Natural Disasters

In spite of all the progress made by modern science and technology in penetrating the mysteries of nature and providing new possibilities for its transformation, we remain largely helpless in the face of such natural phenomena as earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, floods, and droughts. Natural disasters occur suddenly, but with periodicity, and man has been confronted by their devastating consequences throughout history. The way people deal with these problems is primarily predetermined: by charac- ter, by conditions, and by the social and economic development of society. Industri- ous efforts to reconstruct nature, and exploitation of her resources, have brought about additional damage, and there is the apparent danger that our interference with the atmosphere and other areas such as climate, soil, and hydrology has initiated devastating processes which may well be irreversible. As a result, the effects of natural disasters, and all the ensuing repercussions, become ever more aggravating. Their scope becomes global, and for the time being we have no effective countermeasures at our disposal with which to fight them. The contemporary world, then, faces the interconnected and interdependent phenomena of ecological crises and natural disasters: the problem of protecting man from the environment, and the concurrent problem of protecting the environment from man.