Children’s Vulnerability to Environmental Exposures: Changing rates of infectious disease

Oct 14m 2010

Source: NIH

National Library of Medicine

National Center for Biotechnology Information

Photo Source: Unsplash

Changing rates of infectious disease

Global climate change will likely increase the spread of some infectious diseases categorized as vector-borne, food-borne, and water-borne diseases. Among the vector-borne illnesses, the climate health impact literature focuses primarily on malaria, dengue fever, and tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease. Complications from a number of such diseases, particularly malaria, are higher in children. Regarding diarrheal diseases, a number of studies have shown links between temperature or rainfall events and generic acute gastrointestinal illness or specific food- or water-borne illnesses (Drayna et al. 2010; Fleury et al. 2006; Singh et al. 2001; Thomas et al. 2006; Zhang et al. 2008). One study looked specifically at pediatric diarrheal disease incidence and temperature. During an El Niño year when temperatures were up to 5°C above normal in Lima, Peru, diarrheal hospitalization rate among children increased to 200% of the previous rate (Checkley et al. 2000). Another potential health threat is rapid human migration, which increases the chances of large-scale exposure of immunologically naive populations to infectious diseases (Patz and Reisen 2001).

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