Abstract

COSTA, Francisco da Silva; CARDINA, Miguel; VIEIRA, António  and  MANFRINI, Gisele Cristina. The 1967 floods in great Lisbon (Portugal): public health and student voluntary action. Finisterra [online]. 2021, n.117, pp.273-286.  Epub Aug 01, 2021. ISSN 0430-5027.  https://doi.org/10.18055/finis21155.

This article aims to highlight the impacts that the floods of November 1967, in the Lisbon region, had on public health and the analysis of the role played by the self-organized action of health students, particularly medicine. The method was based on a systematic review of the literature carried out in public and private archives and in the PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Disasters databases. Several video and audio documents were analysed with interviews that reported the health students’ interventions after the 1967 floods in Lisbon. As a result, it is evident that the student volunteering was organized in order to respond to the impacts of floods, with special emphasis on public health, highlighting in this field the students involved in the vaccination campaigns and urgent health monitoring of the affected populations. Hence, the students’ actions in helping the victims of the 1967 floods provided knowledge of the environmental problems of public health and deficiencies in health care for a large part of the Portuguese population at that time.

Keywords : Floods of 1967; catastrophe; public health; medical students.

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