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Natural disasters influence on study of pupils
We live in a place where flood usually happens. After each flood or typhoon, it is very difficult for us to go to school because the road to school is still under water and thick mud layer.
Besides many broken trees lie about in disorder and in the way, so for year we often cannot go to school for 7 – 10 days more than pupils in other areas do. Our houses leaked and flood
water rose high, which made our books and notebooks wet, so after that my parents had to
spend a lot of money on buying new ones, sometimes without money we cannot go to
school until receiving government supports, and unfortunately some pupils in too poor
family left school. Especially, after typhoon in 2006, our houses were mostly broken, metal
sheets flew, fortune, clothes and study equipments were lost. We fell in bad situation.
Pupil group in team 37, Hoa Hiep Bac ward Some organizations such as Farmer, Women, Youth and War-Veteran Union and Associations
combined with Pupils’ Parents Association, Study Encouragement Society and Hai Van Border statiuon 244 to campaign children in school age to schools. Maintaining continuous education
classes in the evening with 53 pupils. Steering committee of Conpulsory Education in ward associated with Border Post 244 in starting a new class to universalize education and eliminate
iliterates for 20 trainees over 35 years old.
8.4 Impacts on Health
Ward medical station is a solid 2-story house with functional rooms and 4 patient beds. The staffs include 6 people 2 male, 4 female, in which 1 doctor and 1 physician. The medical
station carried out well National medical target programs, methods for preventing epidemic diseases and protecting community health. Task on ensuring the quality of food sanitation and
safety is increasing. In 2008, 5.050 people times came to examine and cure in the medical station.
Rate of malnutrition children under 5 years old in ward in 2008 were about 6,51, much less than in 2007 with 14,96. Also in 2008, over 400 poor children times were got many benifits
from social charitable programs and other projects.
Situation of epidemic diseases, especially diseases relating to environment were control rather well thank to standby medical activities and good preparation before natural disasters.
However, in the opinion of ward staffs, properly because of unconvinient weather, some epidemic diseases increased rapidly last year such as varicellous epidemic in teams from 17 to
20 about ½ number of children were varicellous, fever epidemic.
According the elderly people that we interviewed in Hoa Hiep Bac ward, old people used to live longer thanks to the better climate. People’s health is affected not only by natural disasters but
also by the environment. The living environment is affected by the wastewater from local industrial zones. At present, all people in Hoa Hiep Bac ward use drilled well water. The
rainwater seeps into the soil and pollutes the water source. Some skin diseases causing itch, he fell into the pond behind his house. Some pupils had the books and notebooks soak with
rainwater because the roof blew away. All school classes also had the roof blown way. Hai Van school has about 20 pupils in Section 1 and 2, which is a sunken area suffering from
flood every year. These pupils had to take many days off. Teacher Nguyen Thanh Tuan, Headmaster of Hai Van primary school, Hoa Hiep Bac ward
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rheumatism, sore throat and nose are quite common, especially among elderly people. More people also die young due to strokes or dengue fever. Regarding men, many suffer injuries from
accidents during fishing such as falling into the sea, blown away by the waves, broken leg, rheumatism.
The risk for women to get infected with diseases is higher than for man. This is because women have special needs for hygiene. Therefore, many women ask for assistance in medicines,
medical equipment and water purifying system in time of typhoons and floods.
Regarding reproductive health, Women Union staff in the two wards said the infection rate is relatively high about 70 of all patients. Due to these diseases, many women cannot use IUD
intrauterine device. Consequently, they tend to have many children as the contraception burden is on the women.
Poor households have free medical insurance. Near poor called by local people as “difficult families” usually cannot afford to buy medical insurance. The problem is the high number of
difficult and near-poor households. For example, in Section 24, Tho Quang ward, there are 50 households, among which 8 ones are poor, 9 ones are near-poor. These near-poor families do
not get any subsidy for free medical insurance nor can they afford to pay for medical services, even when there is no natural disaster. As mentioned above, this group does not constitute the
“official poor”. However, observation by the research team reveals that this group also faces with similar problems as the poor group: shortage of jobs, unstable livelihoods, unsafe houses,
and no access to health services…Therefore, this group really needs more attention. One of the needs of this near-poor group, especially women, is for free medical insurance.
Although we do not have official statistics nor complete evidence to confirm the above- mentioned findings in terms of accuracy, severity of diseases, this can serve as a basis for
deeper researchsurvey on the impacts of natural disasters and climate change on coastal people’s health.
8.5 Clean water supply, drainage and sanitation Clean water supply
