Climate change and its linkage to diseases
Climate change is referred as a phenomenon, in which the average weather condition of the earth changed depending on the weather changes that prevailed from the prehistoric times. The weather change is confirmed when the statistical distribution of the weather change persists for a longer time, for decades or for millions of years (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). Climate change is one of the biggest reason for the outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is because the climate change brings favorable conditions, in terms of temperature, humidity and pressure for the growth and proliferation of different insects such as mosquitoes and other microbes like viruses, bacteria and fungi (Bellard et al. 2012). Some of the biological stressors, which evolved due to the climatic change are- Zika virus, Ebola virus, malaria, dengue, Chikungunya, tuberculosis and bird flu.
The prime aim of this report is to identify stressors that proliferates due to the climate change, and this report also provides nowadays a detail account of stressors. Further, in the context of the research article by Hoberg and Brooks (2015), a health promotion strategy including different interventions to prevent and control the stressor will also be discussed.
The linkage between climate change and outbreak of diseases is a subject of research and three categories of research has been conducted to find out the linkages between the climate change and disease (World Health Organization 2017).
- Historical evidence: it is based on the research methodology, in which data are collected from the recent past evidences. For example, in recent past a link between malaria disease and climatic change has been done in the Punjab region of India where periodic malarial epidemic occurred after excessive high monsoon and humid weather. Similar outbreak occurred after the incidence of El Nino in California.
- Statistical model: it requires the current geographical distribution of the disease and the specific climate condition of that location. Further, this model helps to predict the climatic influence in the distribution of the disease in nearby regions.
- Early impact assessment: this assessment includes different infectious diseases, and the early impact of disease on health which is occurring due to various climate change.
According to the World Health Organization (2017) statistical data, climate change affects the social and the environmental determinants of health through clean drinking water, fresh air, shelter to live and sufficient food to eat.
- In the year 2003, a heat wave occurred due to climate change resulting in the death of 70,000 people in Europe.
- The increase in amount of pollutants due to excessive fossil fuel combustion and the increased incidence of temperature rise, deteriorated the worldwide health conditions of 3 million people with lung diseases.
- Every year, climate change triggers different natural disasters causing an average of 60,000 deaths in developing countries.
- Climate change has triggered vector-borne diseases in china and Africa where people are suffering from malaria, data suggests that around 4000,000 people died due to malaria every year in these countries.
Stressors are substances that triggers the stress response in any individual. A chemical, physical or biological agent leads to cause stress in an organism. There are different types of stressors that are present in our environment. Physical stressors are related to a person’s employment related issues or physical hard work, whereas social stressors are the different social and family related demands. Chemical stressors are different types of drug and alcohol that affects the human mind and biological stressors are different diseases that directly affect the health of an individual (Cockrem 2013). Within all these type of stressors, biological stressor is directly associated with the climate change. One such stressor is Zika virus, which came into existence in 2013 in Brazil. Zika is a vector-borne virus that requires four preconditions for their optimal growth and division, Aedis aegypti female mosquito acts as a vector, presence of optimal growth conditions and a host to infect and grow. Change in climate is the biggest reason behind this outbreak, because factors such as the lifespan of the mosquito, their biting rate, incubation period of the virus depend on the warm weather conditions (França, França and de França 2017). There are many more evidences of devastating climate change and outbreak of Zika. In the year 2016 in Ecuador, El Nino occurred with heavy rainfall and warmer air temperature. This condition was optimal for the growth of Aedis mosquito and the spread of Zika virus. Hence, from above all instances, it is evident that climate change leads to evoke the biological stressors such as Zika and affects millions of lives every year. It is a major concern of health experts to propose some interventions to prevent the outbreak.
How it affects the world population
Prevention of the disease associated with climate change is always very difficult as the optimal growth conditions are provided by the nature itself. Hence, to deal with such situations, the intervention should focus on the nature itself, to control such epidemic. However, there are few facts that narrows the line, which includes the lack of vaccines for the specific treatment of Zika. As the Zika virus grows and spreads using mosquito as a vector, the preventive strategy should focus on the control of reproduction of the vector mosquito itself (Ioos et al. 2014).
- According to Weaver (2013), the first strategy to stop the mosquito should be interception in the enzootic lifecycle.
- The second strategy is to decrease the amount of vulnerable people getting affected from Zika virus. This can be done by channeling to the preventive mode, using mosquito nets, applying mosquito repellants to reduce the exposure.
- The third preventive strategy can be limiting the zone of Aedis mosquito far from the urban or rural population. This can be done by removing water clogs, removing any places where water can be clogged that helps the Aedis mosquito to divide in ample numbers, spreading mosquito repellant chemical in the locality where mosquitoes are present in higher numbers (Thurston and Nykamp 2016).
- Removing the reservoir for the virus can be the fourth preventive strategy to get rid of this biological stressor. For this purpose, people need to be educated about their daily practices that will help to reduce the number of infection. The awareness campaigns about spread, growth and prevention of Zika can help to reduce the number of infections.
- Fifth intervention is not related to the vector but human as the carrier of the disease. According to Aubry et al. (2015), 3 percent of blood donors of French Polynesia were infected with Zika during blood donation. Hence, blood transfusion can be one of the ways through which this virus enters in the human body. Therefore, the fifth intervention strategy should be to control the human infected Zika from spreading to other humans through blood transfusion.
These above interventions are related to preventive strategies, whereas there are few strategies that can be used to eliminate the vector and the virus, in order to control the spread of this disease. The first one is tailoring the vector genome, so that the lifespan of the mosquito can be minimized. Decreased lifespan of the mosquito will lead to fewer bites to the humans and less chance to be infected with the disease (Alphey and Alphey 2014). Another intervention can be introduction of a bacterium known as Wolbachia in the genome of the vector mosquito. This bacterium will stop the transmission of the virus from vector to human. Hence, the above mentioned strategy is an effective procedure to secure the humans from mosquito bites (World Mosquito Program, 2017).
Conclusion
Earth’s climate has been changed drastically from the prehistoric condition. From the end of Ice age, nearly 7000 years ago, the climate is continuously changing. Climate change is increasing the temperature of earth and due to this warm and humid temperature, different unknown virus gets evolved and infect humans. Zika, dengue, chikungunya and many more are examples of such biological stressors, which are being triggered by the climate change in recent times. This report identifies Zika virus as stressor and presented a set of preventive and curative strategies that can be used to control the Zika virus to infect humans.
References
Alphey, L. and Alphey, N., 2014. Five things to know about genetically modified (GM) insects for vector control. PLoS pathogens, 10(3), p.e1003909.
Aubry, M., Finke, J., Teissier, A., Roche, C., Broult, J., Paulous, S., Desprès, P., Cao-Lormeau, V.M. and Musso, D., 2015. Seroprevalence of arboviruses among blood donors in French Polynesia, 2011–2013. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 41, pp.11-12.
Bellard, C., Bertelsmeier, C., Leadley, P., Thuiller, W. and Courchamp, F., 2012. Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity. Ecology letters, 15(4), pp.365-377.
Cockrem, J.F., 2013. Corticosterone responses and personality in birds: individual variation and the ability to cope with environmental changes due to climate change. General and comparative endocrinology, 190, pp.156-163.
França, K., França, A.P. and de França, R., 2017. Environmental psychodermatology: stress, environment and skin. In Stress and Skin Disorders (pp. 47-53). Springer International Publishing.
Hoberg, E.P. and Brooks, D.R., 2015. Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 370(1665), p.20130553.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014. Climate Change 2014–Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Regional Aspects. Cambridge University Press.
Ioos, S., Mallet, H.P., Goffart, I.L., Gauthier, V., Cardoso, T. and Herida, M., 2014. Current Zika virus epidemiology and recent epidemics. Medecine et maladies infectieuses, 44(7), pp.302-307.
Thurston, M.M. and Nykamp, D., 2016. Insect Repellents for Zika Virus Prevention. US Pharm, 41(7), pp.47-50.
Weaver, S.C., 2013. Urbanization and geographic expansion of zoonotic arboviral diseases: mechanisms and potential strategies for prevention. Trends in microbiology, 21(8), pp.360-363.
World Health Organization (2017). Climate change and health. [online] World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].
World Health Organization (2017). World Health Organization. [online] Who.int. Available at: https://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/chapter6.pdf [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].
World Mosquito Program (2017). FAQ | World Mosquito Program. [online] Eliminatedengue.com. Available at: https://www.eliminatedengue.com/faqs/index/index/type/wolbachia [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].
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