Disaster Preparedness among Nepalese Residing in Japan: a Mini-Review

Abstract

The rate of natural disasters has shown prolific increment in last few years with Asia being one of the regions with highest occurrence of disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides and so on. Nepalese immigrants are highly increasing in Japan hence the objective of this study was to identify the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of disaster preparedness among them. A structured questionnaire was used and bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the determinants of knowledge, attitude and practice. Total of 404 Nepalese participated in this study and we identified that Nepalese immigrants has lower practice of natural disaster preparedness. We also identified that Japanese language is the biggest barrier for Nepalese to seek correct information on disaster preparedness. Thus, Japan government in light of growing immigrant population should think about policies to include information related to natural disasters in Nepali language into their official websites in order to increase their KAP on disaster preparedness.