The Effect of Land Use Change on Exposure to and Transmission of Pathogens

According to WHO, within the last 20 years, at least 30 new diseases have emerged to threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people (McMichael 2004). Most of these emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are zoonotic, as catalogued by the Institute of Medicine (Daszak et al. 2001). Understanding the way in which human interactions with the environment facilitate vector-host interactions may improve preventative measures and public health practices. Human-induced environmental change plays a major role in the emergence of zoonotic diseases (McMichael 2004, Eisenberg et al. 2007), often because these changes increase human-vector interactions (McMichael 2004). Malaria is the world’s most prevalent vector-borne parasite, and in 2011 killed an estimated 655,000 people (WHO 2011). Understanding the environmental conditions that facilitate malaria outbreaks may give insight on effective practices or initiatives to eradicate malaria. Paper prepared for the Environmental Studies Senior Seminar/Geography Capstone