Climate Change & Waterborne Infections: Risk Management Strategies

This report examines the significant impact of climate change on public health, specifically focusing on the increased risk of waterborne infectious diseases such as Cryptosporidiosis, Giardiasis, and Salmonellosis. It highlights how changing weather patterns create favorable conditions for the growth and spread of these pathogens, particularly in regions like Africa, New Zealand, Canada, and parts of Europe. The report discusses the use of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) for risk assessment and outlines key components of outbreak management, including identification, confirmation, case definition, case findings, and control measures. Effective outbreak management leads to reduced infection spread, decreased mortality and morbidity, enhanced understanding of infections, and improved readiness for future incidents. The report concludes by emphasizing the necessity of proactive risk assessment and intervention strategies to mitigate the severity of waterborne disease outbreaks exacerbated by climate change, emphasizing the urgent need for comprehensive public health measures.

INFECTION
RISK
MANAGEMNET

Introduction:
• Climate change is one the major issues affecting the health of people.
• Increasing changes in climate leads to increasing change in health
conditions.
• Direct effects- increasing exposure temperature, change in weather and
flood (Hoberg, E. P., & Brooks, D. R. (2015).
• Indirect environmental effects- exposure to disease, microbes and air
pollutants.
• World health organization has been observing increasing rate of
occurrence of water-borne infectious diseases such as cryptosporidiosis,
Salmonellosis and giardiasis (Raiten & Combs, 2019).

Infectious risk due to climate change:
• Climate change is one of the major factors contributing to the
negative impact on the health of the population.
• The change in weather and climate induces a suitable condition
for the growth and development of the infectious organisms
(Mahon & Doyle, 2017).
• Infections that has been majorly effecting the population during
climate change are Cryptosporidiosis, Giardiasis and
Salmonellosis, a water-borne infection which effects the gastro-
intestinal region of a person causing severe condition of diarrhoea,
abdominal cramp, fever and vomiting (Walker, 2018).

Impact of climate change to the water-
borne infections:
• Cryptosporidiosis, Giardiasis and Salmonellosis are found to
occur more often during the late summers and the early falls.
• During the season the people are exposed to the bacteria and the
other pathogens in greater manner.
• The temperature and moisture in the air provides a better
atmosphere for the bacteria and the pathogens to grow (Nasir et
al., 2017).

Regions more susceptible to occurrence of
water borne infectious disease due to
climate change:
• Africa
• New Zealand
• Canada
• California
• And other regions of Europe (Maurin & Gyuranecz, 2016).

Risk assessment of water borne infectious
disease due to climate change:
• The reason behind the increase of water borne infections are the change
in climates as well as poor sanitization and water conditions.
• The Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) system can be used to assess the
infectious disease outbreak risks due to climate change.
• The method is divided in to three parts:
(1) defining the level of the risk and then selecting the associated risk
factors;
(2) structure the BBN model; and
(3) calculating the associated probability of the mark variable in the model
and then assessing the infectious disease outbreak risk (Kim et al., 2019).

Outbreak management:
• Identification
• Confirmation
• Case definition
• Case findings
• Control measures (Ramesh et al., 2015)

Benefits of the outbreak management:
• Reduced effects of the infection and its spread
• Reduced mortality and morbidity (Charles-Smith et al., 2015).
• Better knowledge regarding the infection
• Readiness for further similar incidents (Duintjer Tebbens &
Thompson, 2016).

Conclusion:
• Climate change has major impact on the health of a population
and effects a community.
• One of the major outbreaks due to climate change is water borne
infectious disease outbreak
• It is necessary to take proper risk assessment and interventions in
order to restore the severity of the outbreak.

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