304 - Climate Change and Vector-borne Diseases – A National and Global Perspective

Human influence has resulted in climate warming at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years. Climate strongly influences the distribution and occurrence of environmentally sensitive diseases. Changes in climate lead to changes in the environment, which result in changes in the ecology, incidence, and distribution of vector-borne diseases. The number of reported cases of these diseases have more than doubled over the last 20 years in the United States, driven by multiple social and environmental factors. In the United States, enhancement of vector-borne disease diagnosis, prevention and control capacity are seen as a high priority for resiliency against these public health threats that are influenced in part by climate change. On a global basis, however, climate change is expected to result in significant environmental change, leading to migration of large numbers of people away from areas that are no longer habitable, into crowded urban settings. In these settings, vector-borne diseases, such as dengue and malaria, transmitted by highly adapted urban vectors like Aedes aegypti and Anopheles stephensi, pose a significant challenge for global public health, compounded by over-crowding, poverty and poor sanitation that are also likely outcomes. Effective prevention and control will likely be complicated by increasing environmental and social change, with the burden of health impacts borne in tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and South America where limited resources often complicate the capacity to respond with effective prevention and control efforts. For these reasons, on an international scale, climate change poses existential threat to global health.