CCOUC

災害及人道救援研究所

Q: Could you tell us about the over all aims of the Centre for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response?

問：陳教授，可否與我們分享災害及人道救援研究所的整體目標？

EC: We have an acronym for the centre - CCOUC. The target is to use evidence-based methodology, like disaster epidemiology, and some interventions to understand what the best way is to deal with disaster, and to study disaster, in areas of the world in which probably, at the moment, there is a major gap in the knowledge.

答：我們的研究所簡稱CCOUC。世界上有很多地方常年受災難威脅，但有關其具體情況及如何應對的研究卻不多。我們希望透過循證醫學方法，包括災難流行病學及各種干預模式，更全面地了解災難，以開展最有效的防災救災工作。

Q: Why did you choose to collaborate with the University of Oxford?

問：您為何選擇與牛津大學合作？

EC: We started to work with Oxford in 2007 when a funding opportunity came along for a climate change and health study in urban settings, and we started working with Professor Jeremy Farrar who became a very important partner for us. The platform that we managed to build while doing the climate change-related research led us to think that potentially, if we wanted to do more, we should expand the topic into disaster response because, as we all know, with climate change there will be more disaster and, in Asia, which hosts 85% of disasters and 75% of global economic loss, its probably a good expansion platform to do more. And given the fact that Oxford is a good platform that supports innovation and creative research - as long as it's scientifically sound – to solve human health-related problems, we decided that we should start a centre with a focus in disaster and medical humanitarian response.

答：我們於2007年開始與牛津大學合作，與Jeremy Farrar 教授開展一項有關城市地區氣候變化與健康的科研項目。在建設這個與氣候變化有關的研究平台期間，我們發現如想為人類健康於氣候變化的影響下作出更多貢獻，不得不把研究範圍延伸至災難救援領域。我們把研究定位在亞洲，因百分之八十五的災難發生在該區，經濟損失亦佔全球總數的百分之七十五。眾所周知，氣候變化將帶來更多災難，亞洲更會首當其衝。從過去的合作中，我們知道牛津十分支持創新與前瞻性的科研，因此決定成立這個災害與人道救援研究所，開展有關工作，用科學解決人類健康問題。

Q: How is climate change affecting your research?

問：氣候變化怎樣影響您的研究？

EC: Being someone who is interested in the human health impact of disaster, climate change is definitely a topic that we need to focus on because we know that the impact of climate change is enormous to populations in urban settings, for instance in places like Hong Kong and Tokyo, these are locations where it is highly densely populated and there are enormous inequalities in the city in terms of health outcomes. There's only a very limited amount known about the human health impact of climate change in those environments, so, as a result, the direction of research has to be - for the 21st Century - how climate change is impacting population, and most importantly of all, how the disasters associated with climate change may be affecting public health systems, service delivery, disaster patterns, and, most importantly of all, human health outcomes.

答：對一個研究災難與人類健康關係的學者來說，氣候變化絕對是一個值得關注的課題。我們知道氣候變化對人口稠密的都市有著深遠的影響；香港、東京等城市人口密度甚高，貧富差距嚴重，氣候變化亦對不同人群帶來不同影響。關於這些健康影響，我們所知甚少。因此我認為二十一世紀的研究方向，應集中分析氣候變化如何影響人群，特別是與氣候變化有關的災難如何影響公共衛生系統、服務、疾病病譜，以至最重要的人類健康等問題。

Q: Can you tell us about your research in rural Chinese villages?

問：可以告訴我們您於中國農村進行的研究嗎？

EC: We have this programme called the 10 Village Ethnic Minority Project in China, essentially how it started was that in 2009 we received this need of support to engage in disaster relief in rural communities in an area, essentially it's the origin of the Yangtze river, and at that juncture what happened is that we venture into the village 9 months post-disaster, we realised that there is technically no reconstruction because the resources are not there, they are ethnic minority groups and a lot of policy doesn't reach them, so what we did is of course we help with the medical response and, in the course of the response, we actually realised there is a lot of things that can be done in those communities. So since then, together with the staff, the students, with our collaborators, we decided to build a programme that looks into what is the best way to provide the support and to 'knowledge transfer' our technical knowledge and scientific findings to local communities, Since then we have been building project sites in remote areas of China with the criteria of them being ethnic minority-based (non-Han Chinese) and in extreme poverty (less than 1.25 dollars per person per household), and most important of all is that they are disaster-prone communities. We usually work them for 24 months and we make use of the technical basis of the disaster epidemiology and interventions that were evidence-based in terms of how you deliver health messages in communities where literacy level is very low, and we work with them, so we empower them with methodology we believe would enhance their response to disaster, response capacity, and then we chart the impact for those communities; the disaster preparedness is at least 40% increased and also there's a major self-efficacy improvement of what they should do to protect their own health, and also the disaster outcomes. And as of now we are planning to do another 5 sites in other plans of china over the next two years.

我們正於中國推行一項十大農村少數民族健康計畫。項目於2009年展開，當時我們接受委託，於長江源頭一個農村社區進行災後救援工作。那時距離災難發生已有九個月的時間，由於國家的政策比較難下達至少數民族社區，而該社區的資源亦十分匱乏，因此該區基本上沒有任何重建工程。雖然在很多方面都有缺口，我們當時能做到的，也只有一些醫學救援而矣。自此以後，我們與其他同事、學生以及合作伙伴構思了這個項目，陸續於中國偏遠地區建立項目點，用最有效和具科學根據的方法把知識轉移到有需要的社區。這些社區都有一些共同點，包括以少數民族（非漢族）為主，屬於極度貧窮人口（人均日收入少於1.25 美元），及位處容易受災的地區。我們一般於同一社區工作24個月，利用災難流行病學的理論設計干預活動，因此傳遞的健康訊息都有科學根據。雖然這些社區的知識水平較低，但我們希望可以通過這個項目與村民合作，增加他們應對災難的能力。在定期進行的項目成效檢討中，我們發現項目的推展使村民更了解災難為健康帶來的後果，防災能力及保護自身健康的意識與項目開展前相比，亦大大提高了達百分之四十或以上。我們計畫在未來兩年把項目推展到中國的另外五個農村。

Q: Has this less to any conclusions about disaster epidemiology? How does your research fit into translational medicine within the department?

問：農村項目有沒有影響您對災難流行病學的看法？

EC: Disaster Epidemiology is one of the best public health medical tools to understand, analyse, and put together evidence-based intervention to help medicate the adverse impact of disaster for population. You need to apply this knowledge but, from our research in rural communities in climate change and disaster response, we realised that if we manage and train people on this particular methodology and potentially devise new ways to apply this methodology through research it's the best way to support communities to improve their response, policy-making, and most important of all, get our scientists into the field to do something useful to improve the being of our population.

答：災難流行病學是公共衛生其中一項最有用的工具，用以理解、分析，以及整合各類循證醫學干預，為受災人口解憂。我們從農村社會氣候變化、災難應變等研究中總結了一些經驗，發現最有效支持社區應急及制定相關政策的方法，是通過研究與培訓，把災難流行病學的方法傳播出去。更重要的是，科學家需要走進田野，利用專業知識服務人群。

Q: What are the centre's plans for the future?

問：研究所未來有甚麼發展？

EC: I think the team who join and engage in disaster-related research, at the end of the day what they are trying to do is to be able to do more for populations who are affected by disasters and humanitarian crises. What we aim to do is to take the opportunity to do more research to understand what's happened to the population, and hopefully, through that, devise some good approaches to address their needs. Second of all it's a good platform, for people interested, to solve very difficult problems, technical problems in the field with scientific methodologies, so we hope that this centre provides a platform for scientists to join us to look at this challenge for human beings in the 21st century. And last but not least, we take this as an opportunity to train up our students because we honestly believe that our students will have these multiple effects in the future, they are the ones who are going to bring the knowledge and expand it in the field of study, and honestly from my point of view anyone who is interested to do work related to public health and medicine, they should always at least have some exposure of how they should respond and put together scientific evidence in the crises or extreme setting because that is the best way to see how well you know your stuff.

答：我認為有意參與災難研究的人士，最終也是希望可以幫助更多受災害及人道危機影響的人。我們會利用研究所進行更多有關這一方面的研究，並發展新的方案以解決受災人口的需求。再者，研究所提供一個理想的平台，讓科學家聚首解決二十一世紀困擾人類社會的問題。最後，我們希望把人道救援工作薪火相傳。我堅信我們的學生會把這門科學發揚光大，惠及大眾。事實上，有志投身醫護或公共衛生的人士都應該汲取一些在極端情況下工作的經驗，因為這是全面地測試知識和能力的最佳方法。