摘要：Disasters are rarely natural, hazards always are! Extreme weather events are natural physical phenomena, but it is their interactions with vulnerabilities of human life that makes them disasters. Although definitions vary, disasters are a combination of complex, interdependent, mutually influential factors, in action simultaneously. They are best described as ‘serious disruptions of the functioning of a community causing widespread human, material, social, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources’.(Published: 17 December 2012)Citation: Glob Health Action 2012, 5: 19837 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v5i0.19837This paper is part of the Cluster Health and health systems impact of natural disasters - more papers from this cluster can be found here.
