At the 35th European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Global conference in Vienna, Austria, the development of climate-informed infectious disease risk management systems was discussed.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change is one of the biggest threats to public health in the 21st century. It is widely understood that the ongoing changes in temperature, rainfall, and sea levels are causing the contamination of crops, food scarcity, water scarcity, and changes in the growth, survival, and virulence of pathogens. One such problem in particular is the increase of vector-borne diseases such as mosquito-borne diseases and tick-borne diseases. At this time, half of the world’s population is at risk of mosquito-borne diseases, which could increase to affect billions more without proper intervention.
Go deeper with GlobalData
One current strategy is the development of climate-informed early warning and response systems, currently underway at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS). Researchers are currently developing a HARMONIZE 4health toolkit that will have the tools and infrastructure to harmonise climatic, socioeconomic, land use, and disease surveillance data to monitor infectious disease risks, particularly vector-borne disease risks. The technology utilised in the toolkit includes R and Python programming, as well as drone imagery.
Further, ICREA and BSC-CNS are developing an IDExtremes platform, where the toolkits will be made available to researchers, data managers, and government healthcare agencies. This platform will allow users to explore data sets, model data, and make forward-looking predictions. An additional project, TACTIC, is underway where the ICREA and BSC-CNS will be conducting health attribution studies to help identify which countries and industries may be responsible for emissions that are threatening our health. One such study has been ongoing in Barbados, where it was discovered that the risk of dengue increases several months after drought events, possibly due to the mandate that residents must store sources of water outside their homes, thereby leading to increased mosquito breeding sites. One goal of the program is to then translate these disease outbreak risk warnings into actions and interventions.
Another initiative in development is a seasonal indicator platform called EpiOutlook, which is being funded by the EU. Similarly to the other programs, EpiOutlook provides infectious disease preparedness from an epidemiological standpoint based on climate predictions and projections. EpiOutlook will be used to monitor vector-borne diseases including leishmaniasis, malaria, West Nile virus, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, non-cholera vibriosis, and tick-borne diseases.
One common theme from these climate-informed infectious disease risk management tools is the use of evolving technology, which was further demonstrated by the National University of Singapore. Their research involving infectious disease surveillance in changing environments uses a combination of drone and satellite imaging to monitor changing environments. Furthermore, they have been experimenting with the use of AI to aid in their research, incorporating tools such as ChatGPT and pre-trained foundation models. More specifically, these AI tools can analyse drone and satellite imagery to identify and analyze features of interest in changing environments. Overall, the development of climate-informed infectious disease risk management systems involves a multidisciplinary integration, along with the use of evolving technology to fully understand our evolving environment.
