Sichuan Ruined House

Health Intervention and Evaluation

Interventions are typically delivered within three months after the needs assessment. The intervention approach aims to enhance the community’s disaster resilience by delivering health education campaigns that cover the use of the disaster preparedness kit, evacuation routes, and health-promoting behaviours relevant to post-disaster situations (e.g., proper crop management after flooding).

In addition to enhancing knowledge related to disaster preparedness in the community, the project team also introduces other health-related themes to allow villagers to make informed decisions about their health. These health topics include:

In order to examine the effectiveness of the health education campaigns, evaluations for individual participants are conducted before the intervention (baseline assessment), immediately after (outcome evaluation), and one year after the intervention (impact evaluation).

The following are some findings from the project:

Waste Management

Indoor Environment

  • About 50% of the villagers are unaware of indoor environment health hazard.
  • 80% of the villagers reported at least one family member smoked regularly inside the house.
  • 50% of the households let their farm animals enter the house freely.

Water and Health

  • More than one-third of the households did not have fixed toilets (43%) and used holes as their toilets (36.7%).
  • Around 10% of the villagers did not wash their hands routinely.
  • 50% of the villagers suffered from scarce water supply, and one-fourth of them did not boil water before drinking.

Healthy Lifestyle

  • Most residents in the villages were elderly and the majority of them had developed chronic illnesses, such as hypertension and diabetes. Health education addressing unhealthy lifestyles (e.g. smoking, drinking, and high salt intake) were delivered in the villages.

Disaster Risk Literacy

  • Although all EMHP sites had at least one major natural disaster occurred within the previous five years, about 40% of the villagers did not perceive their villages as inside disaster-prone areas. Less than one-third (20-30%) considered themselves to have the capability to protect themselves; only one-fourth of them (25%) perceived emergency kits as important, and only a small number of villagers (<5%) had emergency kits.
  • Apart from village doctors, no one had ever received first aid training.