Silent disasters

Citation

Wilson, H.C. (2002), "Silent disasters", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2002.07311daa.001

Silent disasters

Silent disasters

Not all disasters are heralded by multi-national news coverage. This form of treatment by the media is usually reserved for major disasters within the developed world, but there are those insidious disasters that are slowly creeping up on mankind and fail to attract much sustained media attention.

Droughts are a good example of this form of disaster. They seldom make the headlines until the loss of life through starvation, mass migration, and disease reaches astronomical proportions. HIV/Aids is another such disaster. The infection rate in some countries now approaches 40 per cent of the population, which in itself is bad news but there are other ramifications of this disease that are very seldom commented on by the media.

Those infected are increasingly debilitated which means that they cannot work the farms to grow the crops to feed themselves and their children. This type of disaster has other ramifications in that much of the aid is targeted at preventing the spread of the disease, or is targeted towards the treatment, but little is targeted at the remediation of the direct effects on those associated with those who are infected.

Reports now in the press have focused on major personalities visiting the areas worst affected describing children dying of Aids at their desks while attending school classes. That the situation should have reached this stage is unforgivable.

Associated with this, political activities in certain countries have aggravated the situation by removing those farmers who are capable of producing the crops and foodstuffs so desperately needed and replacing them with locals who have very little knowledge of high-level intensive crop production or maintenance of the equipment needed for this activity. This is a recipe for a major disaster combining high levels of infection, with political instability, with poverty with hunger, with impoverished medical care, with mass migration – and add to that a low rainfall.

This will not be a sudden disaster but an insidious disaster that slowly creeps up on a country gathering pace at an exponential rate which will result in very large numbers of deaths. Such is my interpretation of the situation in central and southern Africa, and are we in the developed nations prepared for it?

Henry C. Wilson