[WEHAV STACKS channel strives to create an inclusive forum for voices of People of color, women, native, and- displaced cultures; from USA since 2007]
Welcome back to global perspectives and climate migration. This is module eight where we will be discussing climate change, disease, and human mobility. climate variability alters temperatures, humidity and precipitation. And ultimately this translates down into all of the conditions that factor into communicable diseases specifically but also other types of disease as well and treatment for those diseases; migration both spreads and responds to disease outbreaks. And we'll see a couple of key examples of that later on in the lecture.
And then lastly, climate driven disasters ultimately strain sanitation, health infrastructure, and governance. We'll be looking into all these things as we proceed along.
So flood is one of the key drivers of disease as a catalyst. so flood water spread water and also vectorbor pathogens; displacement shelters amplify exposure, and overlapping emergencies challenge containment. So what we're ultimately going to see is that the way that weather influences the movement of pathogens. It also influences the movement of people and therefore how people's interactions might contribute to the spread of diseases.
A key example would be in Sierra Leone 2015 flood during the Ebola outbreak displaced thousands into stadium shelters. this crowding and poor sanitation ultimately disrupted medical oversight increased transmission risk. So we had an increase in the transmission of a communicable disease because of a flood that occurred and forced people into closer quarters and ultimately reduced the ability to manage the spread of that outbreak.
This illustrates how one hazard flooding can multiply another infectious disease.
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And then that becomes a national and as in the case of Ebola ultimately became sort an international emergency. There was just so much panic and fear around that outbreak, climate and communicable diseases.
There's a couple of slides that are going to be on this broader topic. rising global temperatures accelerate vector life cycles. So, shortening the time between generations of mosquitoes and ticks and allowing disease transmission to occur more frequently and for longer periods each year. So, that exposure is increasing because of the heat that we're experiencing on the planet. then we can look at sort of meteorological issues including rainfall and humidity that create new e ecological niches.
We know just from experience that standing water in general standing water can be a breeding ground for the types of insects that carry diseases like Zika and also malaria. But when we talk about standing water from floods or heavy rains, it's the same thing. It's just on a much bigger scale, right?
So even drought forces water storage practices that can also harbor mosquitoes. So in either case in either swing of too much water and not enough water or increased aridity, you can have a broader impact of spread of disease.
Now let's look at extreme weather events that disrupt sanitation systems spreading water borne diseases such as cholera lepto. So, this came up before and kind of choked me up. I'm going to try to pronounce it this time. Leptos psoriasis. Got it. And typhoid fever through contaminated flood water or damaged sewer networks.
And we've actually discussed this on multiple systems of how some in class, some in the lecture about how just like the adverse flow of water or an a massive influx of water, let's say seawater into a freshwater system, can create challenges when it comes to sanitation or how those systems work to ultimately protect the water supply.
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It's the same thing with diseases., so that's one thing to just keep in mind. When you have those disruptions to the weather patterns and to the climate, it's going to have a trickle down effect within all of our existing infrastructure systems, including water, climate and communicable diseases continued.
so all of these things kind of impact different areas.
So I kind of want to- I don't want to go through this entire table; but ultimately high temperatures can increase transmission risk of multiple types of diseases. it can change the incubation period. It can increase the survival of adult female vectors. So it can basically extend the lifespan of the animals or the insects that are spreading these diseases.
because if we're talking about floods, there could be increase in the exposure to the bites of mosquitoes, which is going to increase potentially the exposure to diseases like malaria. Same thing with ticks and just the changing of the suitable aquatic environment for reproduction could ultimately increase the growth or spread of the diseases, by nature of increasing the spread of the animals themselves, the insects themselves.
And droughts can increase transmission risk or exposure to vector bites, as well as in some cases it can decrease populations of these insects, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have a reduction effect on the disease or the spread of the disease itself.
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There's a chart here or a diagram rather that is gonna explain the transdisciplinary nature of climate change and infectious disease. We can look at different factors like urbanization and how they contribute to altered vector ranges. But ultimately within this, we're looking really specifically at these four things including dengue, malaria, Lyme disease, and then tick-borne encephalitis.
So we're going to see an increase in infections; but ultimately when we have climate change, if that's coupled with deforestation or extreme weather events, it ultimately can influence the patterns of how people travel. Right?
So where there might be outbreaks that are specific to one area, because of the nature of the other changes, it could force migration through planes or other means that spread that same disease or infection to other parts of the world. It can change how people contact each other or don't.
It can also lead to broader pandemics that affect the entire globe or increased mortality and morbidity because of the types of infections that would have only affected one population prior. So let's look at this.
Shifts in temperature gradients push disease into new altitudes and latitudes. so we're seeing an expansion of things like malaria into areas that really didn't exist before. And we're also seeing that deforestation and land use change can change how wildlife contact and how the movement of wildlife can also impact the spread of these types of diseases, which brings us to vector and zoonotic expansion.
So warmer climates usually expand the cases of malaria, zika virus and dengue. Changing animal habits increase zoonotic spillover. Okay.
So and we've kind of not talked about this issue very much when it comes to this course. But ultimately as the climate changes and humans migrate so are animals. animals are migrating to find food, to find shelter, to protect themselves from different extreme weather cases or events not not limited to forest fires or floods.
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So as those animals move around, if they are potentially host to insects that might be utilizing that host for support, then that insect is going to move along with that group. I mean it's going to continuously spread and change those challenges for the animal but it relates to the human population as well.
This can continue on into other areas of social vulnerability. Earlier we talked about flooding and how the flooding issue is really like one of the key drivers. Flooding and heat but flooding specifically is one of the key drivers of this sort of spreading of not often airborne disease but zoonotic diseases. But let's talk about another one that's more specific to humans, the human immuno deficiency virus.
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So if we're talking about climate change and its impact on health outcomes, we see a chart here that's discussing how climate change- and whether it's rainfall or global warming- can lead to floods which ultimately sort of force migration, but also food insecurity and the expansion of infectious disease. That impacts people living with HIV through increased HIV transmission, and also can change logistics and infrastructure damage around health support, which can influence health care outcomes for people living with all diseases or conditions. But ultimately there was a study that was done that focused specifically on HIV and flooding in West Africa. in 2024 public health challenges study links flooding to higher HIV transmission across Africa.
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Floods destroy clinics and roads. art distribution halts. People living with HIV lose access to medication and social support; food insecurity and displacement force, transactional sex or unsafe practices. So again, we're not even necessarily talking about sex work, but the social nature of food and intimacy that it might be an undercurrent of you know all societies becomes a health issue when we talk about climate change in different parts of the world but for this case specifically West Africa.
So this is ultimately leading, potentially leading to an increase in infections. Climate health and inequality are therefore intertwining and disease becomes not just a biological but a social outcome. This issue actually was brought up to me by a fellow Georgia Tech alum who works at the CDC., we were just talking casually over an alumni event and she brought up this case when I was discussing the nature of this class; and I thought it was so fascinating because it's something I never would have linked together.
But the CDC is doing a lot of this type of really granular specific research about health and heat or health and flooding that impacts different communities all over the world. So there's so much to dig into this let this lecture be sort of an intro to the idea of health outcomes as an averse relative to the climate or climate change, but there's so much going on. and now I we'll talk briefly about a more familiar issue.
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Everyone is very familiar with covid 19 and sort of how it connects to health and climate change the covid 19 pandemic disrupted global migration systems halting labor flows, closing borders, and exposing how dependent many economies are on mobile and informal workers. So, a lot of times when we talk about migration or even like international migration, we're looking at that desire to leave and not being able to because of a policy reason, not because of a health outcome.
This is a situation where not only were people forced to stay within certain countries or prohibited from entering certain countries, people were also deported from certain countries irrelative to sort of a visa status or a health status or even a legal status.
It just really boiled down to that halt that happened because of the panic or sort of the response to Covid 19. Lockdowns revealed that links between mobility and vulnerability. those unable to move whether due to poverty, policy or illness face the highest exposure and least protection. I mean, imagine being trapped in a country or sick, not being able to commute or or move because of an illness that requires a quarantine, and then also not having health support or health care in that country.
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And many of you might not remember specifically that even from state to state within the country, if you traveled from certain cities to other cities, you might be forced to quarantine for up to two weeks in a hotel. Imagine flying from Atlanta to New York and having to quarantine in a New York City hotel for two weeks before you can do what you needed to do in New York. It really became a broader issue that centered around health, but ultimately was a migration focus and issue.
The crisis underscored health as a foundation of resilience, showing how disease outbreaks can immobilize entire populations, and stall adaptation or recovery efforts. And lastly, post-pandemic recovery plans offer a chance to integrate public health, climate adaptation, and migration policy; this is ensuring that future emergencies do not sever livelihoods or al isolate vulnerable groups,
now one benefit of this was that because of covid 19, many industries had to adapt and find ways to have work from home policies. These same types of work from home policies might actually be the the guideline or sort of the lifeline for one understanding how to mobilize economic support and economic stability during a future breakout or pandemic but separately understanding how it is possible that migration can be supported in industries, even across boundaries.
Being able to work from other locations, remote locations, allows people to make different types of choices and provides different opportunities for those who for lack of a better example often times when faced with evacuations or acute evacuations may not do so for fear of losing their job.
If they have the opportunity to work remotely, we now are helping to reduce that issue. So now let's talk inequality, trust, and climate resilience. Disease and disaster exposure follow historical patterns.
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Now this is something that we've seen throughout this entire course. Almost none of this stuff is new. It's all based on responses that are very similar and familiar to other like societal patterns, economic patterns, and even health patterns. As low-income, racialized, and marginalized communities are often concentrated in high-risisk environments, flood planes, industrial zones, and urban and urban heat islands. We talked about during Hurricane Ian in Florida, how members or residents in an assisted living facility for seniors passed away due to extreme heat following or during a hurricane.
It was a cascading effect where you had a hurricane happen which caused blackouts which caused extreme heat due to the combination effect of no energy for cooling and also urban heat island effect. It's just one of those things that tends to concentrate around lower income and people communities where people who have less access to funding or quality spaces.
Access to health care, infrastructure, and information and not just exposure determines survival. So we've talked about this as well mitigating negative outcomes through increasing people's access to information with informal settlements in rural areas facing the steepest barriers to treatment and recovery.
And this is often times why when it comes to issues of flooding and health or flooding and communicable diseases, some of those populations that we've discussed in Africa different countries within Africa different cities major areas densely populated areas that's why those research areas are a key focus; because there is such a strong overlap between dense population also flooding and also the spread of these types of diseases.
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Governance, trust, and adaptation. So public trust and clear communication are essential for crisis response. We know that with covid 19 there was a lot of confusion around the safety of precautions or whether precautions were necessary. whether wearing a mask or social distancing was beneficial, whether the vaccines were safe to to take and or even effective. So those are all things that came into question from a society in a politicized way at least in the United States.
So true reliance depends on equitable governance where adaptation plans are co-created with communities integrating health systems, infrastructure, and social protection into unified climate strategy. And ultimately I want to close this module by just discussing again that climate adaptation is not separate from public health outcomes. surveillance, sanitation and social safety nets are core to this and health systems must anticipate disease shifts.
So it's not enough to understand that certain areas may be prone to certain conditions due to how they're structured or density or even historical patterns. These things are- none of this stuff is happening in a vacuum; it can all incorporate or move around to influence other geographies.
And the big takeaway from this module is that climate change is a health crisis before it's a migration crisis. Frankly, often times it is, as we've seen in several examples in this study or in this u module, that health issues highly influence migration or at least the intent to migrate or move.
Floods, droughts, and displacement reshape the geography of disease. Covid 19 revealed how policy can both protect and immobilize. And again if we do further investigation of Covid 19, I do invite all of us to look at the outcomes that happened across a number of countries. I think United States because of how that disease was politicized in the United States. We have to be able to look at that through a scientific lens and make sure that we're understanding that United States might not be the best example for that specific outcome.
[KE: Hmph]
And then lastly, resilience depends on integrated systems. So governmentally, socially, even economically, we need to be thinking about the environment, health, and the policy around all of these issues together.
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