Planetary health is today inextricably linked to population health. Climate change, an integral part of planetary health, is foremost among global environmental changes affecting human health. This mammoth challenge is characterized by the potential risk to cripple health systems worldwide and profoundly alter disease dynamics, thereby threatening the well-knit fabric as well as growth of society. Unfortunately, much of the evidence for these linkages has come largely from the developed world. By focusing on India, one of the significant developing countries of the global economy, Climate Change and Disease Dynamics in India aims to fill a crucial gap in the fields of climate science and public health. The book is divided into three main aspects: fundamentals, impacts and applied. By examining these aspects and more, the book seeks to explore the multitude of issues related to climate change and disease dynamics; right from the basics to the bedside to the boardroom. Each chapter reviews relevant global and India-specific evidence, and also the implication of that knowledge in programmatic terms and policy implications.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Since the dawn of medical science, people have recognized connections between a change in the weather and the appearance of epidemic disease. With today's technology, some hope that it will be possible to build models for predicting the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases based on climate and weather forecasts. However, separating the effects of climate from other effects presents a tremendous scientific challenge. Can we use climate and weather forecasts to predict infectious disease outbreaks? Can the field of public health advance from "surveillance and response" to "prediction and prevention?" And perhaps the most important question of all: Can we predict how global warming will affect the emergence and transmission of infectious disease agents around the world? Under the Weather evaluates our current understanding of the linkages among climate, ecosystems, and infectious disease; it then goes a step further and outlines the research needed to improve our understanding of these linkages. The book also examines the potential for using climate forecasts and ecological observations to help predict infectious disease outbreaks, identifies the necessary components for an epidemic early warning system, and reviews lessons learned from the use of climate forecasts in other realms of human activity.

This book brings together expert opinions from scientists to consider the evidence for climate change and its impacts on ticks and tick-borne infections. It considers what is meant by 'climate change', how effective climate models are in relation to ecosystems, and provides predictions for changes in climate at global, regional and local scales relevant for ticks and tick-borne infections. It examines changes to tick distribution and the evidence that climate change is responsible. The effect of climate on the physiology and behaviour of ticks is stressed, including potentially critical impacts on the tick microbiome. Given that the notoriety of ticks derives from pathogens they transmit, the book considers whether changes in climate affect vector capacity. Ticks transmit a remarkable range of micro- and macro-parasites many of which are pathogens of humans and domesticated animals. The intimacy between a tick-borne agent and a tick vector means that any impacts of climate on a tick vector will impact tick-borne pathogens. Most obviously, such impacts will be apparent as changes in disease incidence and prevalence. The evidence that climate change is affecting diseases caused by tick-borne pathogens is considered, along with the potential to make robust predictions of future events.

The twentieth century witnessed an era of unprecedented, large-scale, anthropogenic changes to the natural environment. Understanding how environmental factors directly and indirectly affect the emergence and spread of infectious disease has assumed global importance for life on this planet. While the causal links between environmental change and disease emergence are complex, progress in understanding these links, as well as how their impacts may vary across space and time, will require transdisciplinary, transnational, collaborative research. This research may draw upon the expertise, tools, and approaches from a variety of disciplines. Such research may inform improvements in global readiness and capacity for surveillance, detection, and response to emerging microbial threats to plant, animal, and human health. The Influence of Global Environmental Change on Infectious Disease Dynamics is the summary of a workshop hosted by the Institute of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats in September 2013 to explore the scientific and policy implications of the impacts of global environmental change on infectious disease emergence, establishment, and spread. This report examines the observed and potential influence of environmental factors, acting both individually and in synergy, on infectious disease dynamics. The report considers a range of approaches to improve global readiness and capacity for surveillance, detection, and response to emerging microbial threats to plant, animal, and human health in the face of ongoing global environmental change.

This publication is intended to contribute to prevention and control of the morbidity and mortality associated with dengue and to serve as an authoritative reference source for health workers and researchers. These guidelines are not intended to replace national guidelines but to assist in the development of national or regional guidelines. They are expected to remain valid for five years (until 2014), although developments in research could change their validity.--Publisher's description.