How do Changes in Hydro-Climate Conditions Alter the Risk of Infection With Fasciolosis?
Abstract
Fasciolosis is a widespread parasitic disease of livestock and is emerging as a major zoonosis. Since the parasite and its intermediate host live and develop in the environment, risk of infection is directly affected by climatic-environmental conditions. Changes in disease prevalence, seasonality and distribution have been reported in recent years and attributed to altered temperature and rainfall patterns, raising concerns about the effects of climate change in the future. Therefore, it is urgent to understand how changes in climate-environmental drivers may alter the dynamics of disease risk in a quantitative way, to guide parasite control strategies and interventions in the coming decades. In a previous work, we developed and tested a novel mechanistic hydro-epidemiological model for Fasciolosis, which explicitly represents the parasite life-cycle in connection with key environmental processes, allowing to capture the impact of previously unseen conditions. In this study, we use the new mechanistic model to assess the sensitivity of infection rates to changes in climate-environmental factors. This is challenging as processes underlying disease transmission are complex and interacting, and may have contrasting effects on the parasite life-cycle stages. To this end, we set up a sensitivity analysis framework to investigate in a structured way which factors play a key role in controlling the magnitude, timing and spread of infection, and how the sensitivity of disease risk varies in time and space. Moreover, we define synthetic scenarios to explore the space of possible variability of the hydro-climate drivers and investigate conditions that lead to critical levels of infection. The study shows how the new model combined with the sensitivity analysis framework can support decision-making, providing useful information for disease management.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC24A..06B
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4315 Monitoring;
- forecasting;
- prediction;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4322 Health impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS