Assessment of environmental health in the 2012 East Azerbaijan earthquake

On August 2012، two earthquakes measured 6 and 6. 2 on the Richter scale took place in Eastern Azerbaijan province. Environmental Health Department is accounted as one of the main units for providing and supervising environmental sanitation services at the emergencies، therefore، the objective of this study was allocated to assess environmental health response performance in recent earthquake. Through multi-stages stratified sampling، we selected 8 and 4 villages from the earthquake zones of Heris and Varzaghan respectively. The collecting data tools in this research were the WHO checklist in 7 categories، 14 subcategories، and 37 environmental health activities and also the minimum standards of Sphere Project checklist. The status of environmental health in each village was assessed using the mentioned checklists. This study was carried out with attendance of research team in earthquake zones 21 days after the occurrence of earthquake. Among the 37 environmental health activities، 7 activities were the joint ones، which Environmental Health Department had to carry it out with the coordination of other related organizations. In other words، the environmental health has the supervising role in these activities. Totally، such activities had more nonconformities compared with the activities in which environmental health was administered as the main responder. The details of results have been expressed in the full text. Providing intra-sector coordination، prioritizing the needs of the affected population and considering the principles of community based management in the natural disaster are proposed as the recommendations of this study.