The nutritional status and food security assessment among flood victim communities / Nur Atiqah Alias

Floods and its impacts are part of recurrent global disasters and are considered a significant issue, even in Malaysia. There are various factors attributed to floods, including heavy rainfalls, high tide, and human factors such as blocking of channels or aggravation of drainage channels, improper land use, and deforestation in headwater regions. Due to this, food crises during disaster and food-related emergencies may cause food security or rather an insecurity issue. Food security is a term employed to describe the food access’s adequency to meet people's food preferences and dietary needs. Food insecurity has long term impacts and needs to be explored in detail. As part of that effort, a post-flood study was in Bera District of Pahang on January 2015. The aim is to determine food security during an emergency by assessing nutritional status, the right quantity of food aid, needs of food security, risk factors, and proportional piling with the relationship between mapping and chronology for food security status during the flood. This study was carried out using both quantitative and qualitative methods. In determining the nutritional status, food availability, and affordability with the right quantity of food aid, quantitative data collected was conducted using a cross-sectional design and analyzed using SPSS 2.0. Qualitative method was conducted retrospectively to assess the needs of food security, risk factors, and proportional piling and was analyzed using Nvivo 11. Results indicated that all flood victims have a specific requirement to maintain their nutritional status after flood disasters. Median number of food intake for flood victims was 3 times per day and they do not have a problem with food insecurity. The suggested estimation of total energy for flood victims is 2000 kcal based on their basal metabolic rate (BMR). Qualitative data indicated different risk factor of food security for flood victims such as ‘management’ and ‘accessibility’ for adult, ‘food supply’, ‘food choice’ and ‘ food intolerance’ for children and ‘inappropriate food assistance’, ‘feeling insecurity’ and ‘mental and emotional stress’ for elderly. Management of food aid is crucial for measuring food security, it was indicated that inappropriate food assistance, feeling insecurity and mental and emotional stress. Also, food supply, food choice and food intolerance may play as a vital part in food security during flood disaster. In addition, accessibility such as transportation being highlighted as the important thing needed when floods. As from the identification of the risk factor it can be conclude that it is very important to be specifically and directly focus on the needs, pay more attention, and understand the situation of the elderly as they tend to be food insecure especially in emergencies situation. Other than that, proportional piling was carried out. It is a measure of the relative importance of an item for specific uses. Drinking water is the respondents' main item chose as the water and drainage system were affected during flood disaster. The measurement of proportional piling can be concluded because most of the flood victims chose drinking water over fast and dry food. This is due to the water shortage during the flood. Those who lived in the flooded zone has been found as well-prepared and develop their own approaches to overcome the upcoming flood disaster. This is evidenced through their preparation in terms of food stock as well as build high shelf inside their house to save their household goods. In conclusion, the access to the town are down, food aid are crucially in order to make sure flood victims can get adequate nutrition and thus greater food security. Furthermore, food security assessment should be conducted during emergency situations to prevent the occurrence of food insecurity.