In 2019, 396 natural disasters were recorded in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), with 11,755 deaths, 95 million people affected, and USD 103 billion in economic losses worldwide. This burden was not shared equally since Asia suffered the highest impact, accounting for 40% of disaster events, 45% of deaths and 74% of the total affected
[1]. Japan has historically suffered from large-scale natural disasters. Hojoki, one of the oldest essays in Japan, describes a great fire (A.D. 1177), a tornado followed by the relocation of the capital (A.D. 1180), a famine (A.D. 1181–2), and an earthquake (A.D. 1185). Recently, Japan endured the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (GEJET) of 11 March 2011—a magnitude-9 earthquake that attacked Sendai and neighboring cities, leaving 20,000 people missing. This area was attacked by a tsunami (Jogan) on 13 July 869, indicating that large-scale tsunamis occur within a 1000-year interval
[2]. The Nankai Trough mega-earthquake (NTME) is anticipated as the next major earthquake in Japan, involving the Shizuoka prefecture. It is anticipated to cause approximately 323,000 deaths and approximately USD 1.5 trillion in direct impact, with a production and service decline amounting to approximately USD 0.4 trillion
[3]. Sharing
ouresearcher
s' knowledge of the disaster is one way to initiate effective measures against these disasters. For this purpose,
weresearchers decided to share
outheir knowledge with annual seminars about infectious diseases that may occur due to disasters. The participants were from the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) at Tohoku University in Sendai who suffered from GEJET, and those involved in disaster countermeasures and medical treatment in the Shizuoka prefecture since 2014. It is important to enhance the resilience of national health systems for disaster risk reduction. Some approaches include integrating disaster risk management into primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare (especially at the local level), developing health workers’ understanding of disaster risks, applying and implementing disaster risk reduction approaches to healthcare, promoting and enhancing training in the field of disaster medicine, and training community health groups in disaster risk reduction through health programs in collaboration with other sectors
[4]. During disasters, a lack of safe water access and inadequate sanitation facilities allow the transmission of water-borne and food-borne pathogens. Diarrheal diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and shigellosis cause epidemics with high mortality rates. Malaria and other vector-borne diseases in risk areas include arboviruses, such as dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, and tick-borne illnesses, including Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever and typhus. Diseases associated with overcrowding, such as measles in unvaccinated areas and tuberculosis, can occur after natural disasters. During the seminars,
wresearche
rs discussed infectious diseases associated with disasters, such as leptospirosis
[5], dengue virus infection
[6], and tuberculosis
[7,8][7][8].
WResearche
rs also discussed biomarkers for these diseases that reflect disease severity
[9], and a point-of-care test (POCT) to detect pathogens, including loop-mediated thermal amplification (LAMP) in tuberculosis
[10], single-tag hybridization chromatographic-printed array (STH-PAS)
[11], and a nanopore technology-based sequencer called MinION
[12].
WResearche
rs proposed that acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) co-infected with tuberculosis (TB) (AIDS/TB) constitutes a natural disaster because the deaths caused by AIDS/TB account for 47% of all deaths in South Africa
[13]. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
[14] caused a pandemic in 2019 (COVID-19) with more than 286 million cases and 5,429,617 deaths by the end of 2021 (
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/) (accessed on 30 December 2021). The expansion of the pandemic severely damaged society. Therefore, the last two seminars were held exclusively on SARS-CoV-2 infections. In this
maen
uscript, wetry, researchers introduce 10 seminars on measures against disaster-related infectious diseases and propose the role seminars play in combating infectious diseases associated with disasters.