Climate change and its impact on diarrheal disease

An average global temperature has been risen, and it is expected to continuously increase. Climate change directly affects human behaviors such as seasonal labor, migration, life habit as well as incidence of diseases. It is anticipated that climate change will influence on the millions of peoples’ health conditions from the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) (Parry, Canziani, & Palutikof, 2007). Not only malnutrition will increase but also disease and death rate will rise due to the severe meteorological phenomena. In addition, it is anticipated that diarrheal disease will increase and respiratory disease will also rise due to the increased ozone which is caused by climate change. With regards to the impact of the climate change on Asia, especially for the fresh water, which is available near the large river, will decrease by 2050 in South, East and Central Asia.  Densely population areas near the coast could be dangerous because of the overflow of the seawater, and risk of the diarrheal disease and mortality will be increased due to the frequent flooding and droughts. The representative example of the climate change is a rise in temperature. Temperature has an impact on mosquito-mediated disease such as malaria and dengue as well as diarrheal disease such as Vibrio cholera. Especially, diarrhea is a disease which is sensitively influenced by seasonal factors, and it occurs more frequently in the hot season. In the report of the WHO in 2007, which is about an analysis of the impacts of the climate change on health, frequency of the diarrhea was used as a dependent variable in order to measure an impact of the temperature on the waterborne diseases (Campbell-Lendrum, Woodruff, Prüss-Üstün, & Corvalán, 2007). According to the environmental burden of disease report of the WHO(2007), attributable risk of the climate change to the diarrheal disease was 0.90 in developed countries and 0.94 in developing countries. Sigh, Hales, de Wet, Raj, Hearnden, and Weinstein(2001) researched on the relationship between a climate change and diarrhea in the Pacific area , and it was found that impact of the temperature was significant when a lag time was one month. When controlling for the seasonal influence, number of the diarrhea patients was increased by 3% when last month’s temperature was increased by 1℃. Another research was conducted by Checkley et all(2000) in Peru, and it analyzed an influence of the El Nino on children’s diarrhea. Number of the inpatients due to a diarrhea was increased two-fold in 1997~1998 winter, and they argued that the phenomena can be explained by the impact of the El Nino. In the normal temperature before the incurrence of the El Nino, number of the diarrhea inpatients was increased by 8% when a temperature was rised by 1℃. Considering the climate change scenarios specified on the fourth report of the IPCC, it can be assumed that temperature will be increased by 1.8~4.0℃ in 2090~2099 compared with in 1980~1999. Therefore, in order to prevent negative impacts of the risen temperature on the public health, it’s required to establish countermeasures and policies in the social level.

1) Campbell-Lendrum, D., Woodruff, R., Prüss-Üstün, A., & Corvalán, C. (2007). Quantifying the health impact at national and local levels)

2) Checkley, W., Epstein, L. D., Gilman, R. H., Figueroa, D., Cama, R. I., Patz, J. A., & Black, R. E. (2000). Effects of< i> EI Niño</i> and ambient temperature on hospital admissions for diarrhoeal diseases in Peruvian children. The Lancet, 355(9202), 442-450.

3) Singh, R. B., Hales, S., de Wet, N., Raj, R., Hearnden, M., & Weinstein, P. (2001). The influence of climate variation and change on diarrheal disease in the Pacific Islands. Environmental health perspectives, 109(2), 155.

4) WHO(2007). Environmental burden of disease series