Vol. 44 No. especial 2 jul (2020): Development, disasters, and emergencies in public health

“In April 2019, three months after the disaster caused by Vale, which hit Brumadinho with hundreds of deaths and affected dozens of other municipalities with the tailings mud and its contaminants along the Paraopeba River, we began to prepare this special issue of the journal ‘Saúde em Debate’, with the theme: Development, Disasters, and Emergencies in Public Health. Our initial objective was to combine academic research and public debate on different types of disasters and health emergencies, including climate emergencies, in the same number”. This is the Presentation of Health in Debate v. 44, special issue 2 of 2020, signed by the invited scientific editors Carlos Machado de Freitas, Simone Santos Oliveira and Christovam Barcellos, representatives of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation – Rio de Janeiro.

Topics addressed: history, concepts and applications of emergencies in public health; lives at risk of disaster; planning of disaster risk management actions; reducing health risks related to climate change, disasters and public health emergencies; public health emergencies and the Zika virus in Brazil; safe hospitals in disasters; Incident Command System and risk communication; assessment of resilience to health disasters; public policies on disaster risk management; Samarco’s disaster and health policies in Espírito Santo; integration of health services in disaster risk management in the case of Blumenau, SC; floods: the role of the Ministry of Health in occurrences in Brazil; vulnerability of the health sector to disasters from the perspective of professionals and managers in Nova Friburgo; recurrent floods in regularized urban areas; Geographic Information Systems in disaster and emergency risk management; mental health of people in a natural disaster situation; dam safety; territory and deterritorialization: social suffering due to environmental disaster; health of civil defense workers in the Fundão dam failure; forest fires in the Amazon; struggle and resistance of an artisanal fishing community; health surveillance and natural disasters; psychosocial aspects in socio-environmental disasters; challenge of mental health care in the Vale disaster; environmental health surveillance in the Brumadinho dam failure; debates on the disaster process in the Brumadinho dam failure.