
Science and Development Network
News, views and information about science, technology and the developing world
Climate change may well impact insect-borne disease, but the exact consequences remain uncertain. How well can scientists predict problems both at the global and regional scale? And what can policymakers do to prepare?
Displaying 1-11 of 11 links
The AMMA programme aims to study how the West African monsoon affects meningitis and malaria epidemics. While it focuses on one weather system, the climate factors it looks at can be generalised to other environments. For example, it examines how wind, dust, rainfall, temperature and humidity, amongst others, affect mosquito density and malaria or meningitis epidemics in people. The website also offers a key resource for researchers in the form of an open-access bibliographic database containing more than 250 scientific articles.
CHIEX investigates how climate variability affects human health in the tropical Americas. It runs projects in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico and Venezuela, and focuses specifically on the spread of dengue fever and malaria in these countries. These projects have practical implications; for example, a study in Cuba led to the development of a "bioclimatological" monitoring system that uses climatic predictions to prevent and control disease.
This online resource captures current articles, reports, papers and books sourced from nongovernmental organisations and development agencies such as ActionAid, SouthSouthNorth, the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Bank. The site features short summaries and links to full papers, all of which are relevant to adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa.
The health gateway of the Climate Institute, which aims to help policymakers tackle climate change, has detailed notes on the resurgence of infectious diseases through global warming. These include vector-borne diseases spread through mosquitoes, ticks, triatomine bugs, sandflies and blackflies. It also looks at rodent-borne diseases, which are also set to increase as the climate changes — increased heavy rainfall can drive rodents out of their burrows and climate change is set to alter human migration patterns which could bring people into closer contact with rodents.
This partnership of government and non-government organisations, researchers, international bodies and the private sector has a much-called for goal: to increase cooperation between organisations involved different sectors such as health, climate, humanitarian assistance, ecosystems, research and operational services.
The partners collaborate on regional projects to increase capacity within the medical and environmental science communities; use rural communication networks to provide information to remote communities; and enhance the capacity of public-health services to predict and respond quickly to cholera, malaria, meningitis and other climate-sensitive diseases.
This LSHTM centre collaborates on projects with the WHO and is the hub for several projects on the health effects of climate change. There is little in the way of background information but the site distils the key points and offers summaries of its own research.
One project looks at the global burden of disease associated with climate change, another is doing a multi-sectoral assessment of the worldwide impact of climate change. LSHTM researchers have published extensively on health and climate change — they were among the first in the world to do so — and the site contains a useful list of these publications.
This is an organisation of African scientists from different institutions that provides an atlas of malaria prevalence and risk in Africa. The website describes the data analysis that provides this geographical model of malaria, and aims to inform decision-makers on how to implement effective malaria control and treatment measures.
MARA is keen to disseminate its research results, and there are downloadable malaria poster maps and a user-friendly information tool, the MARA-LITe CD-ROM, which allows access to the results and products of the MARA project. Technical reports are also available in French.
These country-level reports, published by the Climate Systems and Policy research cluster at the University of Oxford, provide data on observed and projected climates in 52 countries in the developing world.
Each report contains maps, diagrams, tables and a narrative of the data, putting it in the context of the country's general climate. Files in text format with datasets containing underlying and model data can be downloaded for further use.
The CDC's website on climate change and public health offers the background on why the spread of infectious disease is likely to change in the future. A special section on vector-borne diseases outlines how global warming could lead to the re-emergence of diseases such as dengue fever that have nearly been eradicated in some countries. It links to both the CDC's own program on these diseases as well as further reading material.
The EPA regulates the US government's environmental activities and enforces related legislation. As this website shows, it also undertakes research on the links between human health and the environment. Here the agency summarises some of the key research on climate change and health, including vector-borne disease. Although much of the agency's research does focus on the United States, its studies on how global warming will impact air quality and pollution, for example, are likely to be useful around the world.
This part of the WHO's website focuses on the links between climate change and health. One factsheet looks specifically at climate change and infectious disease: it examines the historical evidence for links between climate and vector-borne disease, outlines different models to forecast climatic influences on infectious disease and offers examples of exactly how changes in climate can affect the spread of infectious disease. Another factsheet describes how to translate the science into useful policy decisions so will be particularly valuable for policymakers.