Objective: Exploring how climate change is contributing to the spread of emergin

Objective: Exploring how climate change is contributing to the spread of emerging infectious disease. Climate change influences the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases. For example, changes in weather patterns can influence the population of rodents and other animal hosts that can spread disease to humans. Changes in rainfall can influence the availability of clean water and food supplies, thereby increasing the incidence of diseases transmitted via human and animal wastes. Changes in temperature and rainfall also influence the incidence of vector borne diseases, including diseases spread by mosquitoes.
Multimedia: Silent Spring Series: Global Climate Change and Emerging Infectious Disease. University of California Television (UCTV).
Global Climate Change and Emerging Infectious Disease with Stanley Maloy – The Silent Spring Series Links “https://youtu.be/hfnv5oX2OOk”
. San Diego State’s Stanley Maloy presents the direct and indirect consequences of climate change that are shifting the habitats of animals and plants, increasing the spread of infectious diseases, and altering the availability of clean water and food supplies.
Questions to Answer/Discuss:
Besides extreme weather events, climate change also impacts air pollution, vector ecology, water and food supplies, and environmental degradation.
What types of human diseases can climate change cause by impacting these factors described? Explain your answer and give reasons for why the disease will be increased due to the climate change impacts.
The Developing World Pays for the Failures of the Industrialized Nations. Scarcity of key resources, including water, could exacerbate tensions between ethnic groups, countries and regions as they compete for, and adjust to, different environments and resources. What ideas do you have for preparing for disasters such as drought that can lead to famine and how to handle “environmental refugees” who from the forced migrations of displaced? Explain whether your ideas are preventive or do they just treat the symptoms of climate change.
Climate change has affected vector ecology and the spread of infectious diseases even here in the US. The British company Oxitec wants to hold its first U.S. trial of genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. The plan is to release about 3 million male mosquitoes that have been engineered to produce offspring that die young and can’t reproduce. These genetically modified organisms (GMO) would reduce the population of mosquitoes that transmit dengue, chikungunya or Zika viruses. Do you think this is a viable option for solving the increase in diseases from climate change? Explain your reasons for your answer.
Additional Resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785720/