Climate Change and its influence on human health
Climate change affects human health in various and many ways, some of which I look at below. Climate change and diseases Climate change causes erratic and unpredictable weather patterns. Some places become colder, others wetter, others drier, mostly outside the normal times. In terms of human health, weather patterns will affect the life cycles of pathogens and population, breeding patterns and abundance of vectors. a doctor and a patient - courtesy of dhmri A vector is an organism which provides habitation for, while not being directly affected by a pathogen. Let’s take a tropical disease like Malaria. Malaria is caused by protozoa known as plasmodium. Plasmodium uses mosquitoes as a vector. When an infected mosquito bites a person, it passes along plasmodium into that person’s bloodstream. Mosquitoes also pass along several other diseases alongside malaria, such as yellow fever, elephantiasis, rift valley fever and of course, Zika. A female a...