The December 26 tsunamis that claimed tens of thousands of lives throughout South Asia recalls an earlier disaster in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). In November 1970, a cyclone and tidal bore (a sudden surge of coastal waters) struck southern parts of the country, killing hundreds of thousands of people. In May 1972, Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS ’73, now dean emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and professor of Epidemiology, and W. Henry Mosley, MD, MPH ’65, professor of Population and Family Health Sciences, published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet that demonstrated the importance of early epidemiological assessment in guiding disaster relief.
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