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More investment needed to address ID threats related to climate change
Climate change can significantly impact global health in numerous ways, including increasing the risk for infectious diseases that are spread via food, water and vectors, according to experts.
Infectious Disease News asked Kristie L. Ebi, PhD, MPH, Rohm & Haas Endowed Professor in Public Health Sciences and director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington, what she believes is the biggest global infectious disease threat caused by climate change.
The unexpected and explosive emergence of infectious diseases, such as occurred with Zika virus in the Americas, is the largest infectious disease threat from climate change. Preparing for and managing these threats is hampered by extremely limited investments in health systems that explicitly consider the infectious disease risks of a changing climate.
There is evidence that climate change has already affected the geographic range, seasonality, or incidence of some infectious diseases, with the most compelling evidence for the emergence of Lyme disease in Canada and Vibrio infections in northern Europe. The extent to which climate change could affect the magnitude and pattern of future infectious disease morbidity and mortality depends on changing weather patterns, as well as on development choices, including investments in public health infrastructure and institutions, urbanization trends, globalization, and other factors.
With climate change, there is great uncertainty about which infectious disease(s), which location(s), with what intensity, and when diseases could emerge or re-emerge. These uncertainties are compounded by insufficient understanding of environmental drivers of transmission, including critical thresholds; limited long-term monitoring and surveillance of the geographic range and seasonality of vectors and the diseases they carry; limited mapping of particularly vulnerable populations and regions; limited modeling of how risks could alter over coming decades in a changing climate; and limited considerations of and preparations for a future different from today. Investing in public health and health care institutions and infrastructure, including taking advantage of increasingly fine-scaled environmental information to develop early warning systems and other tools, would reduce uncertainties and enhance the capacity of health systems to effectively manage infectious disease emergence in a changing climate, preventing epidemics to the extent possible and preparing for those risks that cannot be avoided.
Disclosure: Ebi reports no relevant financial disclosures.