Review on global warming and disease dynamics

Gebawo Tibesso Bedasso

Oromia Agricultural Research Institute, P.O.Box 229, Ziway.

E-mail: nadhi2521@yahoo.com. Tel: +251 912 15 27 64,

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to elaborate the concept of global warming and to highlight the impact of global warming on animal and human vector borne disease. Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. Global warming is a gradual process that threatens to have serious consequence over time, including elevated sea level, crop failure, famine, change in global rain fall pattern, changes to animals and plant populations and serious health effect. The diseases are global entities that depend dynamically on interaction between the host populations and the existing regional climate and thus global warming result in considerable shift of the spectrum of the diseases. Global warming accelerate the spread of disease primarily because warmer global temperature enlarge the geographic range in which disease carrying animals, insect and microorganism and germs and viruses they carry can survive. Global warming can influence the emergence and reemergence of vector borne disease such as malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and viral disease like West Nile fever. Generally, climate plays an important role in the seasonal pattern or temporal distribution of diseases that are carried and transmitted through vectors because the vector animals often thrive in particular climate conditions. Therefore, factor that results in global warming should be reduced.

Key words: Global warming, disease dynamics, vectors, disease, transmission.