Germany will support Bangladesh in health management research to improve emergency paramedical and medical care provided during floods in the country, said Health Directorate office on Wednesday.
The researchers will help Bangladesh by investigating how isolated people during floods can be best protected.
Tens of thousands of people in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, are hit by floods, cyclones and other natural disasters every year.
During floods, access to healthcare becomes very limited when the affected population is isolated on a few remaining dry areas of land. The situation becomes especially critical in the case of emergency medical conditions that require very rapid interventions, says Professor M Robed Amin, a director at the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Data shows that drowning and snakebites are the first and second most common causes of death during major floods, he said, adding these are highly preventable deaths.
To this end, DGHS now collaborates with several government, academic and NGO partners from Bangladesh and Germany in a project called "FlutNetz" (which translates to "flood net" in English), said the official quoted in a statement by the DGHS.
The health management researchers will train various life-saving skills to paramedical and medical personnel and general people of different age groups.
The project will operate a new information centre that will focus on animal bites and poisoning emergencies.
"This project creates an excellent opportunity to develop and scientifically test such a facility with a vision of turning it into a National Poison information Centre after the research phase," said Professor M Abul Faiz, president of the Toxicology Society of Bangladesh (TSB) and national coordinator of FlutNetz.
Six projects of this kind worldwide were competitively selected by the International Disaster and Risk Management (lKARlM) research funding programme for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, according to Dr Ulrich Kuch, coordinator of FlutNetz.
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