Comment: Nepal quake: the challenges facing disaster response

Dr Andrew Lee from the University of Sheffield's School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) discusses why the Nepal earthquake was a disaster waiting to happen and what challenges the response team face in its aftermath. by Andrew Lee, 27 April 2015, posted on The Conversation The Nepal earthquake was a disaster waiting to happen. The rising death toll is a sad confirmation of my fears when I first heard of the earthquake. And the full scale of things is not yet known, as there will be considerable under-reporting due to the remoteness of some of the affected communities and the lack of reliable casualty reporting systems. Experts have warned for years of a likely earthquake striking the area. Indeed it was predicted that such an event would have catastrophic consequences due to the toxic combination of risk factors that make the country vulnerable. In recent decades there has been a massive growth of the urban population in and around Kathmandu leading to dense overcrowding in the city.