Systematic Review on Climate Change and Infectious Diseases Globally

Abstract

Climate change has significantly altered public health globally, posing wide health risks which have worsened through social exposure and inequities. This has changed weather patterns both locally and globally, elevated the sea levels and this is expected to be continuing annually(Griggs & Reguero, 2021; Tebaldi et al., 2021). Additionally, amounts of precipitation, average temperatures, and further variables like levels of humidity are all on the rise. Moreover, weather changes are on the rise causing heat waves that are intense and prolonged, droughts and more floods. Future health risks are not determined mainly by hazards caused through varying climate but also through individuals and communities sensitivity that are exposed these hazards caused by climate change and the ability of health systems to anticipate and successfully manage the associated risk(Ebi & Hess, 2020). The risks entail injuries and deaths caused by extreme events like storms, floods and heat waves, infectious diseases which includes water, vector and food borne diseases and water and food insecurities. These risks are distributed unevenly and create both novel inequalities and worsen existing risks. The majority of these risks are expected to rise with every unit of warming that is due to climate change(Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2019). The aim of this systematic review is to analyze studies on climate change, infectious diseases and health risks and synthesize evidence on how the climate change impacts infectious diseases and health risks globally. A systematic literature search will be carried out on articles published on climate change and infectious diseases and health risks with restriction from 2000 to 2025. The databases like Google scholar, PubMed and Scopus will be searched to access the articles through various keywords such as “climate change”, “infectious disease”, “waterborne”, “vector borne”, “epidemiology” and “health risks.’ This systematic review will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Guideline 2020. The results reveals that important factors contributing to the emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne, waterborne, and zoonotic diseases entails increasing temperatures, changing patterns of precipitation, and severe weather events. Therefore, most studies suggest that climate change relates to worse human health. This study offers a compressive higher order summary of the literature on how climate change affects human health. Future studies could investigate the possible causes of these correlations between climate change and infectious diseases and health risks to propose adaptation and mitigation measures, as well as the wider sociopsychological effects of climate change on health.