Urbanisation and infectious diseases in a globalised world

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Summary

The world is becoming urban. The UN predicts that the world's urban population will almost double from 3·3 billion in 2007 to 6·3 billion in 2050. Most of this increase will be in developing countries. Exponential urban growth is having a profound effect on global health. Because of international travel and migration, cities are becoming important hubs for the transmission of infectious diseases, as shown by recent pandemics. Physicians in urban environments in developing and developed countries need to be aware of the changes in infectious diseases associated with urbanisation. Furthermore, health should be a major consideration in town planning to ensure urbanisation works to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in the future.

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Most cited references 115

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Urbanization, malaria transmission and disease burden in Africa.

Simon Hay, Carlos Guerra, Andrew Tatem … (2005)

Many attempts have been made to quantify Africa's malaria burden but none has addressed how urbanization will affect disease transmission and outcome, and therefore mortality and morbidity estimates. In 2003, 39% of Africa's 850 million people lived in urban settings; by 2030, 54% of Africans are expected to do so. We present the results of a series of entomological, parasitological and behavioural meta-analyses of studies that have investigated the effect of urbanization on malaria in Africa. We describe the effect of urbanization on both the impact of malaria transmission and the concomitant improvements in access to preventative and curative measures. Using these data, we have recalculated estimates of populations at risk of malaria and the resulting mortality. We find there were 1,068,505 malaria deaths in Africa in 2000 - a modest 6.7% reduction over previous iterations. The public-health implications of these findings and revised estimates are discussed.

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Social and environmental risk factors in the emergence of infectious diseases

Robin Weiss, Anthony J McMichael (2004)

Fifty years ago, the age-old scourge of infectious disease was receding in the developed world in response to improved public health measures, while the advent of antibiotics, better vaccines, insecticides and improved surveillance held the promise of eradicating residual problems. By the late twentieth century, however, an increase in the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases was evident in many parts of the world. This upturn looms as the fourth major transition in human–microbe relationships since the advent of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. About 30 new diseases have been identified, including Legionnaires' disease, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), hepatitis C, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)/variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), Nipah virus, several viral hemorrhagic fevers and, most recently, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza. The emergence of these diseases, and resurgence of old ones like tuberculosis and cholera, reflects various changes in human ecology: rural-to-urban migration resulting in high-density peri-urban slums; increasing long-distance mobility and trade; the social disruption of war and conflict; changes in personal behavior; and, increasingly, human-induced global changes, including widespread forest clearance and climate change. Political ignorance, denial and obduracy (as with HIV/AIDS) further compound the risks. The use and misuse of medical technology also pose risks, such as drug-resistant microbes and contaminated equipment or biological medicines. A better understanding of the evolving social dynamics of emerging infectious diseases ought to help us to anticipate and hopefully ameliorate current and future risks.

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Socioeconomic status and health. The challenge of the gradient.

N Adler, S Boyce, M Chesney … (1993)

Socioeconomic status (SES) is consistently associated with health outcomes, yet little is known about the psychosocial and behavioral mechanisms that might explain this association. Researchers usually control for SES rather than examine it. When it is studied, only effects of lower, poverty-level SES are generally examined. However, there is evidence of a graded association with health at all levels of SES, an observation that requires new thought about domains through which SES may exert its health effects. Variables are highlighted that show a graded relationship with both SES and health to provide examples of possible pathways between SES and health end points. Examples are also given of new analytic approaches that can better illuminate the complexities of the SES-health gradient.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Louis Loutan

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Lancet Infect Dis

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Lancet Infect Dis

Title: The Lancet. Infectious Diseases

Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.

ISSN (Print): 1473-3099

ISSN (Electronic): 1474-4457

Publication date PMC-release: 24 January 2011

Publication date (Print): February 2011

Publication date (Electronic): 24 January 2011

Volume: 11

Issue: 2

Pages: 131-141

Affiliations

[a ]Division of International and Humanitarian Medicine, Department of Community Medicine and Primary Care, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland

[b ]Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

[c ]Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Author notes

[* ]Correspondence to: Prof Louis Loutan, Service de Médecine Internationale et humanitaire, Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, Rue Gabrielle Perret-Gentil 4, 1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland louis.loutan@ 123456hcuge.ch

Article

Publisher ID: S1473-3099(10)70223-1

DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(10)70223-1

PMC ID: 7106397

PubMed ID: 21272793

SO-VID: 4c3a0a7f-50e1-4bc2-bb9d-c133bacdeca5

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Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Urbanisation and infectious diseases in a globalised world

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Point-of-Care Testing for Infectious Diseases Super Collection

Most cited references 115

Urbanization, malaria transmission and disease burden in Africa.

Social and environmental risk factors in the emergence of infectious diseases

Socioeconomic status and health. The challenge of the gradient.

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