ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how human disruptions to natural ecosystems influence patterns of infectious disease, with a focus on the processes of climate change and ecosystem disruption. It considers a series of case studies in the context of the changing environments. Many historic efforts to reduce disease transmission have involved deliberate environmental changes, including draining swamps to prevent malaria and building reservoirs to provide clean drinking water. Environmental change may contribute to disease if it overwhelms infrastructure such as water treatment systems. Zoonotic pathogens accounted for the majority of emerging infectious disease events between 1940 and 2004, and most pandemics originate from zoonotic viruses. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed the emergence of a variety of new infectious diseases. The health impacts of increased stress from more frequent environmental disasters, erratic or failing harvests, environmentally induced migration, and disease epidemics are likely to be significant.
