Latest news on Disaster Risk Reduction

Pertussis is a highly contagious disease of the respiratory tract caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis (WHO, no date).

Vector-borne diseases are diseases transmitted by a living being, usually an arthropod vector, to a vertebrate host (Verwoerd, 2015).

A personally identifiable information (PII) breach is a situation where PII is processed in violation of one or more relevant PII protection requirements (ITU, 2018).

Polluted air is air containing dust, smoke, micro-organisms or gases different from those from which it would normally be composed (WMO, 1992). Alternative definition: Polluted air is air which contains gases and particles emitted to the atmosphere by a variety of human activities and natural sources, or formed in the atmosphere, that at critical levels have harmful effects on human health,…

Pesticide means any substance, or mixture of substances of chemical or biological ingredients intended for repelling, destroying or controlling any pest, or regulating plant growth. Pesticides are inherently toxic, and among them, a small number of Highly Hazardous Pesticides, cause disproportionate harm to the environment and human health.

A road traffic accident is any accident involving at least one road vehicle in motion on a public road or private road to which the public has right of access, resulting in at least one injured or killed person (United Nations, European Union and the International Transport Forum at the OECD, 2019).

Yellow fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes (WHO, 2019).

Critical Infrastructure failure is defined as the failure in one or more of the physical structures, facilities, networks and other assets which provide services that are essential to the social and economic functioning of a community or society (UNGA, 2016).

A flash flood is a flood of short duration with a relatively high peak discharge in which the time interval between the observable causative event and the flood is less than four to six hours (WMO, 2006).

Wetland loss/degradation is a negative trend in wetland condition, caused by physical or direct/indirect human-induced processes expressed as long-term reduction or loss of at least one of the following: biological productivity, ecological role or value to humans (Craig et al., 1979; Olsson et al., 2019).