Malaria and Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon which has affected virtually everything biotic and abiotic on earth. In context with public health the phenomenon of climate change is always seen from the angle of human intervention called anthropization comprising an array of activities such as population explosion, migration en masse, massive forest fire, long-time pesticide deployment in agro-forestry and public health programmes, devastating droughts and floods, tsunamis and earthquakes, etc. Human population boom is the root cause of many ill-effects that emerged out of schemes otherwise planned for human development and growth. It is notable that, in contrast to resources available for sustenance, the human population has rapidly grown particularly since 1950, from 2.5 billion to 7.8 billion in 2020, viz. the overall burden of population has increased by 206.8%, with their pets and those in the wild, having multiplied even more, but at the same time many of which are essential for maintaining life cycle of a large number of hematophagous vectors and even zoonoses. Under the pressure of population build-up, the climate has directly or indirectly affected human behaviour per force and driven humans to, besides mushrooming urbanization, multilevel buildings, development schemes such as hydro-agriculture, quarry-mining, etc., practise container-associated water-storing habits—a major reason for attraction to several human health-related issues correlated to vector- and water-borne diseases, food and drinking water insufficiency, and heatstroke, respiratory and mental health-related disorders arising out of natural disasters, e.g. tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, floods, etc. (Patz et al. 2014).