COLOMBO, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka spends an estimated 19 million U.S. dollars annually on healthcare due to floods and droughts, a new research published on the Asian Development Review journal of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has found, local media reports said here Thursday.
"This cost is divided almost equally between the public and household sectors, with 83 percent of it spent on flood-related health care and the rest on drought-related health care," the study said.
"The most obvious finding emerging from our analysis is that frequently occurring local floods and droughts appear to impose a significant health risk when individuals are directly exposed to these hazards, and that this exposure sometimes requires even higher hospitalization rates."
The Western and Central provinces bore the highest health burden from floods and droughts, followed by the Southern and North Western provinces.
The study noted that the annual cost only includes healthcare expenditure increases, and not productivity declines due to illnesses which may lead to reduced income generation.
Hospitalization among those directly affected by flooding increased by 4 percent, while even among the wider community, there was a 2 percent increase, the study found.
Outpatient care grew by 1 to 4 percent in each district which was affected.
Thousands of people are annually affected by floods and droughts in Sri Lanka per year which affects food cultivation and the economic growth of the island country.
Sri Lanka was ranked second in a report that considers countries most affected by climate change in the year 2017 as per the Global Climate Risk Index 2019.
