Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement,

and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore.

Our goal is to bring evidence and experience to illuminate critical public health issues.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.org.

That's public health question at jhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, the podcast turns to the devastating floods in Pakistan with two terrific guests.

To appreciate the scale of the disaster, I speak with Dr. Debbie Guja, the head of the Center

for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Levine School of Public Health in Belgium.

Next, I discussed the role of climate change with Dr. Ben Zycheck, a Johns Hopkins professor

of Earth and Planetary Sciences. In our conversation, Professor Zichick notes that these floods

in Pakistan are a warning to us all. Let's listen.

Dr. Debbie Guja, thank you so much for joining us on public health on call.

What is the situation right now with flooding in Pakistan?

Yes, well, the flooding in Pakistan has been very, very severe this year.

It really has.

I mean, Pakistan is a country that does see

repeated floods. This is not the first time. In fact, one of its biggest regions, which is called

Punjab. We have part of Punjab is in India, and part of Punjab is in Pakistan. Punjab itself,

the word itself, means five rivers.

And these are massive rivers that come down from the Himalayas and the Karkoram range

into this country, into the Indus Valley and so on and so forth.

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