Letters
Emergency medicine Metabolic diseases
Volume 188 - Issue 11

A food “lifeboat”: food and nutrition considerations in the event of a pandemic or other catastrophe

Authors:  Craig B Dalton, Michelle A Cretikos and David N Durrheim

Med J Aust 2008; 188 (11): 679. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2008.tb01837.x
Published online: 2 June 2008
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To the Editor: The article by Haug and colleagues on household food stockpiling is a useful contribution to a neglected aspect of disaster planning.1 However, rather than providing a guide to what foods should be stockpiled, it may be more valuable to encourage families to increase the amount and rotation of the non-perishables they currently purchase. The authors seek to promote a balanced nutritional diet, but encouraging a family to continue their usual purchasing patterns when stockpiling for a pandemic or other disaster is a simpler, more sustainable, and possibly more effective way to promote household food stockpiling. We must assume that the family currently survives, for better or worse, on their current food purchase pattern.

While the article states that supermarket stocks will become depleted within 2–4 weeks, it is likely that stocks would become significantly depleted at an individual store level within 2–3 days of the last truck delivery, particularly if panic stockpiling occurs. How long interruptions to the food supply chain last will depend on the nature of the disaster, but the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing recommends that people have “enough fluids and food on hand to last you and your family a week.”2 It does not provide guidance on how much water is required per day.

This is an important issue, as mains water could be unavailable within hours to days of electricity supply outages, because electricity is required to pump water into elevated water reservoirs to maintain water pressure. People may be unaware of their daily fluid requirements and may run out of water and other potable fluids before they run out of food. The US Health and Human Services recommends a 2-week food and water stockpile (“one gallon of water per person per day”), which is roughly equivalent to four litres per person per day.3 A random household survey in the Hunter Region of New South Wales after a storm-related disaster in June 2007 revealed that over 80% of households had enough non-perishable food for 3 days, but less than 40% had enough stored drinking water for 3 days (Hunter New England Health, unpublished data).

Community continuity planning should be based on an understanding of baseline household food and water reserves, and household capacity and willingness to stockpile across all social strata. Governments should actively promote household stockpiling and identify strategies to bridge the shortfall in households unable to stockpile.

Authors

  • Craig B Dalton1
  • Michelle A Cretikos1,2
  • David N Durrheim1
  • 1. Hunter New England Population Health, Hunter New England Area Health Service, Newcastle, NSW.
  • 2. NSW Public Health Officer Training Program, NSW Department of Health, Sydney, NSW.

Correspondence: craig.dalton@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

References

View this article on Wiley Online Library

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