大象传媒

Science in Action looks at the science and technology being used to track and tackle the link between two huge global topics - climate change and infectious disease. More chaotic weather and a warmer world represents a potentially serious threat to future human health. The behaviour of disease vectors such as mosquitoes is known to be very sensitive to temperature and rainfall, for example, so it seems unquestionable that climate change will affect many diseases, such as Malaria, West Nile Virus, Chagas disease and Dengue fever, which are transmitted via insect vectors.

Scientists are using complex models to try and understand how these diseases are likely to spread. As well as factoring in other more subtle changes, such as how the behaviour of a mosquito may change as the temperatures rise. They may fly at different times, bite more people and reproduce more quickly. All of this and many other factors need to be factored in, if we are to understand and mitigate the effect of climate change on our health.

Of course the climate has changed many times in the past. Parasitologist, Professor Dan Brooks, from the University of Toronto, has found that when the temperature rises and animals move around more, parasites have the opportunity to switch hosts much more often. He has seen evidence of this from pre-historic climate change events and he says it鈥檚 happening now.

鈥淭he widespread emergence of many localised emerging diseases will threaten our public health systems and our veterinary health systems with a kind of death by a thousand cuts from a large number of diseases, each of which is fairly localised. But the sheer number of them may well overwhelm our capabilities,鈥� says Professor Dan Brooks

Modern technology can help though. Scientists are using data from satellites orbiting the Earth to track the environmental conditions which are suitable for disease transmission and using this data to inform healthcare strategies back on the ground.

(Photo caption: A female mosquito. Credit: Tom Ervin/Getty Image)