Natural Disasters and Mortality in South Asian Countries : Trends and Determinants

This paper mainly aims at examining the mortality trends due to natural disasters such as earthquake, floods, cyclones etc in the five South Asian countries. The paper also makes attempts to identify the determinants of mortality levels due to natural disasters in these countries. The paper makes use of the available secondary data and reports including that of UN ESCAP publications, EM-DAT, WDI, FAO STAT etc. The types of disasters covered in the analysis include Hydro-Meteorological (hurricanes, floods, droughts) and Geo Physical (earthquakes, tsunami). The data used pertains to 1985-2009. Analysis is carried out to find out the association between the mortality due to disasters and economic and demographic characteristics of the countries.
India experienced more frequent disasters such as floods. There is steady increase in the number of disasters as well as total number of deaths due to disasters over the past two and half decades. The mortality due to disasters in South Asia was highest during 1990-94.
The number of disasters increased across the countries during the reference period. The mean number of deaths due to disasters increased in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka..The number of deaths per disaster also increased,