Effects of climate change and human activities on vector-borne diseases

Evidence from Madagascar shows that vaccination could mitigate climate-driven disruptions to malaria control

“…Much work has investigated how the coincident challenge of climate change threatens progress to malaria control (1). Rising temperatures modify mosquito vector dynamics (3)(4)(5), altering infection risk (6,7), but these impacts are often focused in low burden areas at the altitudinal and latitudinal margins of malaria transmission (8)(9)(10). By contrast, extreme weather events, with some types likely to increase in frequency or severity due to climate change (11)(12)(13)(14), disrupt public health efforts (15)(16)(17)(18)(19), including in areas where the burden of malaria is concentrated.…”

The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases

“…Across diseases, outbreak risks are widely associated with mosaic landscapes where people live alongside forests and fragmented ecosystems, and are commonly exacerbated by long-term decreases in precipitation. The combined effects of these drivers are particularly strong for vector-borne diseases (e.g., Lyme disease and dengue fever), underscoring that policy strategies to manage these emerging risks will need to address land use and climate change 10–12 . In contrast, we find little evidence that spillovers of directly-transmitted zoonotic diseases (e.g., Ebola virus disease and mpox) are consistently associated with these factors, or with other anthropogenic drivers such as deforestation and agricultural intensification 13 .…”

“…Across diseases, outbreak risks are widely associated with mosaic landscapes where people live alongside forests and fragmented ecosystems, and are commonly exacerbated by long-term decreases in precipitation. The combined effects of these drivers are particularly strong for vector-borne diseases (e.g., Lyme disease and dengue fever), underscoring that policy strategies to manage these emerging risks will need to address land use and climate change [10][11][12] .In contrast, we find little evidence that spillovers of directly-transmitted zoonotic diseases (e.g., Ebola virus disease and mpox) are consistently associated with these factors, or with other anthropogenic drivers such as deforestation and agricultural intensification 13 . Most importantly, we find that observed spatial outbreak intensity is primarily an artefact of the geography of healthcare access, indicating that existing disease surveillance systems remain insufficient for comprehensive monitoring and response: across diseases, outbreak reporting declined by a median of 32% (range 1.2%-96.7%) for each additional hour's travel time from the nearest health facility.…”

“…Across diseases, outbreak risks are widely associated with mosaic landscapes where people live alongside forests and fragmented ecosystems, and are commonly exacerbated by long-term decreases in precipitation. The combined effects of these drivers are particularly strong for vector-borne diseases (e.g., Lyme disease and dengue fever), underscoring that policy strategies to manage these emerging risks will need to address land use and climate change [10][11][12] .…”

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“…The reproduction of Aedes mosquitoes is favored during the rainy season in tropical and subtropical regions due to the accumulation of water providing suitable settings for larvae to grow (Regis et al, 2014;Rahman et al, 2021). Over the last decades, conditions in tropical and subtropical countries worldwide have favored the emergence and reemergence of arboviral infections due to multiple factors such as climate variability, increased urbanization, human mobility, insecticide resistance, limitations in vector control programs and others (Kyle and Harris, 2008;Guzman and Harris, 2015;de Souza and Weaver, 2024). Only in the Americas, infections caused through the Aedes mosquitoes have experienced an unprecedented rise.…”