Rachel Tolhurst is a professor of international public health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

People living in urban informal settlements talk about their drainage getting relatively easily overflowing and contaminated because they also have relatively poor sanitation, so they don't have good toilet systems, so their drinking water can be fairly quickly contaminated.

And of course, that leads to increased risk of diarrheal disease for children who are particularly vulnerable.

Um, and then in a situation where perhaps because of flooding, roads can be blocked, transport can be disrupted, it might mean that community health workers can't get to homes to help give treatment for children, or that people can't get to health facilities.

So then the, the risk of unfortunately children dying is higher.

Uh, we also see changes in patterns of disease when we get changes in, in rainfall patterns.

So if we get more rainfall, particularly in areas that aren't used to, to, to those levels, and combined with increased humidity because of background heat increases, we can see, for example, more exposure to, uh, mosquitoes that carry malaria, Anopheles mosquitoes, and that can be a particular issue where people aren't used to the risk of malaria or malaria is not endemic where they live, so they don't have immunity that they've built up, and they might not be used to taking steps to prevent malaria.

It's, it's not trivial to provide a safe environment for a woman to have a baby if you're in the middle of a disaster, and so there, there must be knock-on population impacts as well.

So what's the difference between the ones that get it and the one that are on board to the ones that just don't?

Yeah, I think there's a really broad spectrum of reactions to change.

You know, we're all different.

There are people like me who actually find change quite energising and exciting to people who feel deeply unsettled, even if you're just suggesting their desk moves to a different position.

And that's fine.

Yeah, I think when we first spoke, I did say loads of people just don't want to change at all.

And I'm not just a cynic.

So have you got any advice for how people should deal with that?