Community level risk factors for numbers of landmine victims in Chad and Thailand
- 1Departments of International Health and Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA
- 2Global Landmine Survey, Washington, DC, USA
- Correspondence to: Dr L H Moulton Department of International Health, Room E5519, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA; lmoultonjhsph.edu
- Accepted 19 May 2003
Abstract
Study objective: To determine commonalities of landmine victim risk factors in two very different countries.
Design and setting: Data on 249 communities in Chad and 530 in Thailand were collected during 2000–2001 as part of the Global Landmine Survey. Community level variables were analysed in a series of Poisson mixture models with number of landmine victims as the dependent variable. Models developed for each country were tested on the other to investigate similarities and robustness of identification of risk factors.
Main results: Increased community level risk was associated with population size, closeness to another community with victims, emplacement in the previous two years, blocked water or pasture, and the proximity of unexploded ordnance or anti-tank mines. In Chad, risk factors tended to be more related to identifying communities that had crossed a threshold between near zero and moderate risk; Thailand, factors were more related to increases in victim rates.
Conclusions: Current systems of collecting data on community characteristics and landmine victims can provide meaningful risk factor information. Remediation approaches that focus on blockage of important resources and areas of recent, high intensity conflicts may be the most beneficial in reducing the numbers of victims.
Footnotes
-
The Survey Action Center and its partners in the Global Landmine Survey are not responsible for the views expressed in this article.
