The impact of tropical cyclone exposure on infant mortality in low- and middle-income countries

Abstract

Tropical cyclones (TCs) pose substantial health risks to infants, particularly those living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the extent to which TCs affect infant survival in LMICs is not well understood. We examined the impact of TC exposure on infant mortality by linking recently developed TC wind field data with 1,682,249 nationally representative infant survival records from 2002 to 2021 across seven LMICs. We found that, on average, exposure to TCs in utero or in the first year of life led to 4.4 additional infant deaths per 1000 live births (95% confidence interval, 0.5 to 8.4; 11% increase compared to the sample average infant mortality rate). This average effect was mainly driven by excess mortality in Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, and Haiti, with small and statistically insignificant effects in all other study countries. Further investigation is warranted to understand the mechanisms through which TCs affect infant mortality and why some countries’ children fare better after TC exposure than others.