What is the impact of climate change on infectious disease?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18573/bsdj.108Keywords:
Climate change, infectious disease, communicable disease, warming climate, environmentAbstract
The world is warming at an alarming rate; in October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported a 1°C human-induced warming since the pre-industrial period and a current rise of 0.2°C per decade. The UN secretary-general stated that ‘climate change affects every aspect of society, from the health of the global economy, to the health of our children’. Many in the field hypothesise that the changing climate will lead to an increase in the size of vector-borne disease transmission zones, an appearance of tropical disease in temperate regions and the emergence of native species that have the capacity to transmit tropical pathogens. Although a large proportion of the discussion surrounding climate change and infectious disease focusses on malaria, concern exists surrounding other vector-borne diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme disease, and water-borne and respiratory infections. The true effect of climate change on infectious disease is elusive and heavily debated; a comprehensive model including not only temperature, but precipitation, humidity, and extreme weather events is needed to properly evaluate the impact of the warming climate on communicable disease. Whilst the intricacies of the climate and infectious disease is not fully understood, it is important to remember that those most vulnerable to communicable diseases are those living in poverty, so any climate induced increase in transmission will only seek to worsen the already apparent health inequality worldwide.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 The Author(s)
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright for articles published in the journal is held by The British Student Doctor Journal.
Authors are required to complete a copyright assignment form, available here. The form specifies that authors must seek to obtain permission for publication of any content for which they do not already own the copyright, before submission of the manuscript.
The content of The British Student Doctor Journal is usually made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) licence from Creative Commons. The licence lets others distribute the work in its original form as long as they credit the author(s) of the work.
Authors of articles in The British Student Doctor Journal may request that their work is published under a CC-BY 4.0 (Attribution) licence instead. If this is the case, then please contact the Editor-in-Chief (editorinchief@thesdj.org.uk) at the time of acceptance.
For further information about the licences, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.
For full details of our open access and copyright policies, then please visit our website.