Impact of Climate Change on the Outbreak of Infectious Diseases among Children in Bangladesh

Abstract

The impact of climate change and global warming are worldwide and global concern. Bangladesh is unfortunately home to many infectious diseases. Climate change related events like temperature, rainfall, humidity etc. have direct and indirect adverse impacts on the outbreak of infectious disease among children. A number of water, air and vector borne infectious diseases including diarrhoea, measles, rubella, kala-azar, malaria and dengue etc. are common in Bangladesh. A cross sectional study was carried out to observe the impact of climate factors on the incidence of air borne infectious disease among children in Bangladesh. The methodology of the study includes analysis of both secondary and primary data. Results showed the long-term changes of annual mean, maximum and minimum temperature of study area over the study period (1964-2011) found to have in general increasing trends in annual mean and annual mean minimum temperature but the mean maximum temperature slightly rising in recent past decades. Seasonal mean temperatures are also found to have increased trend. The long-term changes in annual rainfall that showed declining trend. Seasonal rainfalls also showed markedly reduced in winter and post autumn season. The primary data reveals that temperature is the main and rainfalls comes next as influencing factor for air borne measles like disease and their outbreak among children. The incidence of measles like disease was found positive correlation with maximum temperature and negatively correlated with average minimum temperature and total annual rainfalls. However, the current understanding of the impact of climate change on the outbreak of air borne infectious disease is not sufficient. To address the existing and future impact of climate change on the outbreak of infectious diseases among children, climate sensitive infectious disease surveillance and continuous monitoring to be considered and further studies are needed.