Exploring Planetary Health Perspectives of Mosquito-borne Infections in Canada: A Rapid Scoping Review

Abstract

Over the past couple of decades, mosquito-borne diseases have increased in Canada. ‘Planetary Health’ is a novel concept that encompasses the impacts of the triple planetary health crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. This study aimed to conduct a rapid scoping review on planetary health with regard to mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases in Canada, in order to understand the complex relations. This synthesis will identify knowledge gaps, emerging threats, mitigation scopes and it will inform future research scopes. An online query of EMBASE, PubMed, and Web of Science was performed and a total of 2,086 citations were retrieved. Finally, 62 articles were then reviewed and synthesized. Temperature and precipitation are playing significant roles in mosquito abundance, extension of temporal distribution and the spread from historical distributions of invasive species to newer geographic locations. In fact, the temperature has been rising so high that some species are now predominantly producing eggs without having taken a blood meal (autogeny). Warmer temperatures increased vector viral loads by several folds, thereby, climate change is effectively making infection rates higher and extending the transmission season. Destruction of the natural environment due to anthropogenic activities depopulates native predators resulting in the flourishing of mosquito populations. Pesticides used to control mosquitoes often failed to gain desired results due to operational and technological limitations and unintended ecological consequences. Planetary Health perspective can provide comprehensive analysis of mosquitoes’ presence and abundance, establishment and expansion of invasive mosquito species and disease carrying capacity for both the native and invasive species. Thus, Canada is at risk of outbreak of several exotic mosquito-borne infections. For public health measures and research, planetary health perspectives are required to better understand the complex and multifaceted connections between infections, ecosystem, climate change and anthropogenic activities.