Introduction to Socioecological Dimensions of Infectious Diseases and Health in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Global changes affect host-pathogen interactions, through the modification of the epidemiological environment (climate, land use, biodiversity), leading to new and sometimes unexpected risks. Epidemics, emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases are outcomes of these changes, and they constitute serious global threats for health. Although some local emergences have a potential for global threat (i.e. SARS, avian influenza, etc.), most of infectious diseases affect rural and poor populations particularly in developing countries, which are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of global change. Southeast Asia is both a hotspot of infectious emerging diseases of potential global pandemics and of biodiversity, particularly at threat due to dramatic changes in land use (Morand et al. 2014). These may explain why international organizations, developmental agencies and non-governmental conservationist organizations have specially focused on Southeast Asia. Infectious diseases are still a major concern in most Southeast-Asian countries (Coker et al. 2011).Many aspects of the environments and the socio-economics are linked to infectious diseases and health. Now, it is time to evaluate in a multidisciplinary approach the socioecological dimensions of infectious diseases in Southeast Asia. This book emerges from a symposium organized in Bangkok in October 2011 at the Faculty of Tropical Medicine of Mahidol University and supported by the IRD, and its main objective was to join scholars in history, sociology, law, ecology, epidemiology, medical entomology, veterinary sciences, physicians and environmental sciences to present a multidisciplinary overview about the links between environment, biodiversity and human health, mostly through infectious diseases.The present book is organized in six parts, each comprising three chapters: (1) infectious diseases and societies; (2) health and socio-ecosystems; (3) global changes, land use changes and vector-borne diseases; (4) monitoring and data acquisition; (5) managing risks; and (6) developing strategies.The first part of this book concerns infectious diseases and societies from historical times to present days. This part starts with Chap. 2 on how Chinese classics of medicine and medical records referred about epidemic febrile diseases. As Dominique Buchillet emphasizes along with famine due to crop failures and other calamities, epidemics exerted a heavy burden on Chinese populations throughout the ages. The chapter reviews the evolution of medical perceptions on epidemic diseases through these Chinese classics, stressing the importance of the growing awareness of variations in environments and the refashioning of discourses and practices relative to epidemic diseases in Chinese medicine.In the third chapter, Malee Sitthikriengkrai and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti describe the history and responses to HIV/AIDS in Thailand from a sociocultural perspective. As persons living with HIV had a way to interpret the meaning of their problem, the authors show how they took p...

Pathogens collections, biobanks and related-data in a One Health legal and ethical perspective

“…A common legal and ethical approach relying on the One Health concept, to deal with the various scientific collections from different disciplines is of great interest to address public health issues such as EID outbreaks or the outcome of future diseases by studying the dynamics of EIDs within its socio-ecological dimensions (Morand et al 2015). The One Health approach has no legal basis but it draws the possibility to consider the animal, human and environmental pathogen under the same legal and ethical framework (Walther et al 2016, box 6).…”

“…Moreover, approximately 75% of new emerging human infectious diseases are zoonoses (Gebreyes et al 2014). Thus, research on infectious diseases and their related pathogens command real cross-disciplinary work associating studies at various time and space scales, and longtime spans that could stretch over geological periods to present (Morand et al 2012). EIDs biological samples associated with these studies are gathered into scientific collections or into biobanks.…”