  Volume 13, Number 1—January 2007   Epidemics after Natural
Disasters  John T. Watson*Comments to Author , Michelle Gayer*,
and Maire A. Connolly* Author affiliations: *World Health
Organization, Geneva, Switzerland;  Suggested citation for this
article   The relationship between natural disasters and
communicable diseases is frequently misconstrued. The risk for
outbreaks is often presumed to be very high in the chaos that
follows natural disasters, a fear likely derived from a
perceived association between dead bodies and epidemics.
However, the risk factors for outbreaks after disasters are
associated primarily with population displacement. The
availability of safe water and sanitation facilities, the degree
of crowding, the underlying health status of the population, and
the availability of healthcare services all interact within the
context of the local disease ecology to influence the risk for
communicable diseases and death in the affected population. We
outline the risk factors for outbreaks after a