Disease appearance and evolution against a background of climate change and reduced resources

Abstract

Global health continues to face increasing challenges owing to a variety of reasons that include the almost constant changes in disease appearance and evolution. Most, but not all, of these changes affect low-income countries and are influenced by climate change. Tracking the recent and anticipated changes in the demographics and global distribution of these changes is essential for evolving effective new methods for dealing with the problems. The recent recognition by the United Nations of the importance of non-communicable diseases is a major positive step. For the sake of this paper, the following diseases were chosen: dengue and malaria, to highlight the role of climate change on vector-borne diseases. Drug-resistant tuberculosis illustrates the role of globalization and reduced resources on disease evolution. The continuing rise in cardiovascular mortality and morbidity, particularly in resource-poor countries is largely attributed to lack of preventive and therapeutic measures against such conditions as hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerosis and congenital heart disease as well as neglected diseases, of which Chagas and rheumatic heart disease will be discussed further.