Climate change and infectious diseases

Abstract

Climate change is a significant threat to human health around the world, and represents one of the most important challenges for public health. There is a growing concern that climate change has an impact on the geographical distribution, seasonality, and epidemic scale of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, due to a variety of extreme weather events caused by changes in temperature, as well as a worsening of air pollution caused by climate change.

Climate change affects the incidence and distribution of infectious diseases. The impact of climate change varies by region, and the Western Pacific and Asia region has been more susceptible to climate change than other regions. Further, the risk of infectious diseases due to climate change is not uniform, and may vary by pathogen and region.

Socio-environmental and economic factors, as well as individual socio-economic and behavioral factors play an important role in vulnerability to climate change. It has been reported that promoting public health policies and programs, such as the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change, enhanced surveillance of infectious diseases, provision of air conditioning in public facilities, improvement of medical and health services, drainage measures, construction of seawalls, and reforestation may have resulted in a reduced vulnerability to climate change. The possibility of differences in the effects of public health policy between diseases and regions should be kept in mind.

In the future, people's lifestyles and values will become more diverse across generations. There are also concerns that health inequalities will increase as the population ages. The implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies, and public health policies for climate change is essential to reduce the disease burden of infectious diseases caused by climate change. Contributing to the promotion of public health policies and a strengthening of public health systems based on regional and population characteristics, through the accumulation of higher-quality scientific evidence is an important task.