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Tropical cyclones led to rise in infant deaths in these countries, new research shows
LOS ANGELES – Families across dozens of countries are preparing this week as another hurricane season begins. However, a new study reveals even weaker tropical storms can have deadly impacts on infants and unborn children.
Health economist Zachary Wagner, a University of Southern California professor, has previously studied war-torn countries and how children are affected by conflict. This latest research, published in Science Advances a few weeks before the start of the 2025 hurricane season, is part of a look at how climate and weather disasters can upend a child's life before it even begins.
"There are a lot of other types of events that kind of have similar effects on our society, and natural disasters, large hurricanes are one of them," Wagner told FOX Weather. "We've also been studying things like floods and heat waves and things like that. But hurricanes really can have this devastating effect. And so we thought that kids living in an environment where a hurricane happens, like how does the health of these kids change? How long do these effects last? Is it similar to the effect of conflict?"
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Wagner and other researchers examined the effects of tropical storm exposure from 2002 to 2021 for seven of the most heavily exposed low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, including Madagascar, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
A tropical cyclone modeling expert helped create the wind speed for a 10-kilometer by 10-kilometer cell for these countries. Then the team looked at the child health records from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, which was completed every 5 years across 90 countries.
The results showed that, on average, exposure to a tropical cyclone in utero or during the first year of life was associated with an additional 4.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births – an 11% increase. The sharp increase was driven by increased deaths in Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which all saw more than 10 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Risks to these children were the greatest in the first year after a cyclone, according to the study.
However, the deaths around the time of the cyclone were not explained by common health risks following natural disasters.
"We thought that it would be things like healthcare utilization, but it could be things like spread of disease after a tropical cyclone happens," Wagner said. "There's often flooding, there's spread of diarrhea illness, respiratory illness, things that are leading causes of death rates around the world."Wagner said the research team is devising a new method to determine why even tropical storms are leading to higher infant mortality.
Economic health researchers will need to utilize different data in the coming years. The Demographic and Health Surveys Program was halted under the current White House administration due to cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding.
They also hope to understand the differences in infant deaths based on location.
"There's big differences across countries," Wagner said. "Where some countries have these kind of large effects, some countries are not seeing much of an effect at all. So, trying to understand what's driving that and that might give us insights into why kids are dying in one place and not another."
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Wagner explained that understanding the deadly impact a tropical cyclone can have on a young child is an important step to protecting them in the future.
"There's a limited amount of resources we have to invest in protecting children," Wagner said. "It's important to know which risk factors are the most important so we can allocate resources in the most effective way. No one's very surprised, I don't think, that kids are harmed by tropical cyclones. It's kind of like a 'water is wet' situation. But at the same time, understanding the magnitude of this effect, where it's a problem, where it's not, that's important for investing resources and ranking, kind of ordering where resources should go to protect the most kids."
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 without a named storm for the fourth year in a article source: Tropical cyclones led to rise in infant deaths in these countries, new research shows
