Journal of Scientific Research and Reports

Abstract

More than 48 million people have been affected by diarrhea and nearly 1 million people have been affected by malaria due to climatic variability in the Sylhet region from 1988-2005. Therefore, the aim of this study is to seek the impact of climate variability on human health. Two types of data including monthly climatic data for six years collected from Bangladesh Meteorological Department, Sylhet and outpatient visit data for six years from two hospitals have collected for this study.  Inferential statistics i.e. Poisson Regression is used to analyze data. The analysis has been done using STATA 12 software; temperature, rainfall, humidity are the independent variable and number of patient is dependent variable. It is found that temperature, rainfall and humidity has significance influence on diarrhea, skin disease and mental disorder. Temperature changes of one degree and rainfall changes of 1 mm may increase 2.5%, 0.19% diarrhea patient respectively. Similarly, temperature changes of one degree and humidity changes of 1% change may increase 6.2% and 2% mental disorder patient respectively. In the same way temperature changes of one degree and humidity changes of 1% change may increase 2.5% and 2% skin diseases patient respectively. The significance level of temperature, rainfall and humidity for diarrhea, skin diseases and mental disorder is 0.00. The present study finds that diarrhea, mental disorder and skin disease are influenced by climate variability and seasonal change. The impact will likely vary by region, the sensitivity of populations. Poor people are more vulnerable than rich people in case of climate change. This study also finds that the health sector has not been developed yet, and the related data is unavailable for research work. Therefore, the present study suggests that it is important to develop a database of diseases for further research.