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Review
. 2019 Aug 6;16(15):2799.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16152799.

Aggravation of Human Diseases and Climate Change Nexus

Mohd Danish Khan  1   2 , Hong Ha Thi Vu  2 , Quang Tuan Lai  1   2 , Ji Whan Ahn  3
Affiliations
Review

Aggravation of Human Diseases and Climate Change Nexus

Mohd Danish Khan et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

For decades, researchers have debated whether climate change has an adverse impact on diseases, especially infectious diseases. They have identified a strong relationship between climate variables and vector's growth, mortality rate, reproduction, and spatiotemporal distribution. Epidemiological data further indicates the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases post every single extreme weather event. Based on studies conducted mostly between 1990-2018, three aspects that resemble the impact of climate change impact on diseases are: (a) emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne diseases, (b) impact of extreme weather events, and (c) social upliftment with education and adaptation. This review mainly examines and discusses the impact of climate change based on scientific evidences in published literature. Humans are highly vulnerable to diseases and other post-catastrophic effects of extreme events, as evidenced in literature. It is high time that human beings understand the adverse impacts of climate change and take proper and sustainable control measures. There is also the important requirement for allocation of effective technologies, maintenance of healthy lifestyles, and public education.

Keywords: climate change; human adaptation; infectious diseases; pathogens; vectors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The relationships between climate change, extreme weather events and associated diseases with their mode of transmission. It also further represents possible urgent human responses for mitigation of climate change adapted from [1,2,3,4,5,6,21,22,23,24].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of the article-screening process across databases: Articles retrieved, articles selected for detailed text review, and articles subsumed in review (where n denotes the number of articles/reports).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Social impact of climate change affecting livelihood, human society and infectious diseases adapted from [6,7,8,9,10,128,129,130].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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