Incidence of Infectious Diseases One Month after the Bam Earthquake (2004)

There are eight destructive earthquakes and 74 natural disasters happen annually all over the world. Iran is one of the 10 calamitous countries in the world. Natural disaster change the echo system and inanimate environment which we are living in. these changes can cause new pathogen or increase the pathogenicity of the available pathogens. This is a descriptive study. We collect data of infectious diseases such as acute severe watery diarrhea, dysentery, acute respiratory infection, suspected to malaria, suspected to measles, suspected to meningitis, hemorrhagic fever, acute icter, acute flaccid paralysis, suspected to brucellosis, tuberculosis and bitten by animals which refer to the health care center after one week of the disaster. The most common cases infections were acute respiratory tract infections. During the study period, 6241 cases refer to clinic because of acute respiratory tract infection. Gastrointestinal infections were the second common cause of referring to clinic. During one month, 738 cases refer to clinic because of gastrointestinal infection. Staging by incidence of other infectious diseases were in the next grade. Cold weather, lack of appropriate housing, lack of heating system, over crowded population in camps were reasons which increase the incidence of respiratory tract infection. So we should provide hygienic water and food and also provide heating system as soon as possible. If any infectious diseases happened, we should mobilize the health care center not to postpone treatment of patients. In this research, we report the incidence of infectious diseases within one month after the Bam earthquake.