Environmental determinants of vector-borne diseases in children
How changing environments influence the spread of vector-borne diseases and what it means for children’s health and well-being.
Highlights
Vector-borne diseases are transmitted to humans through agents such as mosquitoes, ticks or flies. Pathogens that cause vector-borne diseases can be viral, bacterial or parasitic. The frequency of disease transmission, the severity of disease outbreaks, and other epidemiologic variables are influenced by the environment. These include changing meteorological variables from climate change influencing how pathogens are transmitted, changes in animal hosts and viability, and the ways humans interact with their built and surrounding environments.
Data gaps exist for many vector-borne diseases and how they impact health, even in areas where they are common. This underlies the strong need for improved surveillance and public health infrastructure so that more effective and sustainable solutions can be identified and implemented. International communities are identifying, responding to, and recovering from vector-borne disease outbreaks, and considering how their local disease burdens are changing from environmental factors.
The best solutions take an all-of-government approach and emphasize child health considerations to improve their effectiveness and sustainability. Attention to urban planning and the built environment, health care system infrastructure, public health surveillance and monitoring, emerging pathogen resistance to medications, and emerging vector resistance to insecticides is important. Low-cost community investments that support health and vector control focus more on structural and ecological solutions and have the added benefit of reducing toxic impacts from chemicals on child health and the natural world.
