Social Sustainability
Vector-Borne Disease
Diseases transmitted by insects and other vectors — malaria, dengue, Lyme — whose geography is shifting with the climate.
Definition
Vector-borne diseases are illnesses whose pathogens are transmitted between hosts by vectors — chiefly mosquitoes (malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, West Nile), ticks (Lyme disease), sandflies (leishmaniasis) and others. They kill hundreds of thousands annually (malaria alone around 600,000, mostly African children) and are among the most climate-sensitive of all disease categories: temperature and rainfall govern vector survival, biting rates and pathogen incubation, so warming shifts transmission into new altitudes and latitudes — dengue's recent expansion into Europe and highland Africa being the emblem.
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