The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases are increasingly understood as a hallmark of the Anthropocene1–3. Most experts agree that anthropogenic ecosystem change and high-risk contact among people, livestock, and wildlife have contributed to the recent emergence of new zoonotic, vector-borne, and environmentally-transmitted pathogens1,4–6. However, the extent to which these factors also structure landscapes of human infection and outbreak risk is not well understood, beyond certain well-studied disease systems7–9. Here, we consolidate 58,319 unique records of outbreak events for 32 emerging infectious diseases worldwide, and systematically test the influence of 16 hypothesized social and environmental drivers on the geography of outbreak risk, while adjusting for multiple detection, reporting, and research biases. 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 change10–12. 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 intensification13. 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. Our findings underscore that disease emergence is a multicausal feature of social-ecological systems, and that no one-size-fits-all global strategy can prevent epidemics and pandemics. Instead, ecosystem-based interventions should follow regional priorities and system-specific evidence, and be paired with investment in One Health surveillance and health system strengthening.

Emerging Risk to Dengue in Asian Metropolitan Areas Under Global Warming

“…Dengue is one of the diseases that is most consistently influenced by social and environmental drivers (Gibb et al, 2024). The management of emerging risk of dengue need to prioritize climate change responses as the policy strategies.…”

Emergence of a novel reassortant Oropouche virus drives persistent human outbreaks in the Brazilian Amazon region from 2022 to 2024

“…Fragmented forest landscapes and vegetation loss due to deforestation and expanding agricultural land use were pointed as key drivers of OROV transmission. [69][70][71] Alarming growing deforestation trends have been observed in the Brazilian Amazon region since 2018, mainly driven by illegal land grabbing, timber extraction, mining, and agricultural expansion into forested lands. 72 Most OROV-positive localities in 2022-2023 were concentrated in AMACRO, an area considered the new frontier of deforestation that was responsible for a significant fraction of forest lost in the AM (82%), RO (77%), and AC (63%) states between 2017 and 2021.…”