Environmental change and infectious disease: How new roads affect the transmission of diarrheal pathogens in rural Ecuador

Abstract

community study ͉ developing country ͉ diarrheal disease ͉ environment ͉ humans

Research core and framework of sustainability science

“…Their results suggested that the infection process of the disease involved a vast reservoir among wild mammals and that it was transmitted by a large number of insect vectors. Eisenberg et al (2006) analyzed the causal structure of transmission of diarrheal pathogens in rural Ecuador, elucidating the causal path from road proximity, social contact, and infection rates. Raso et al (2006) modeled the risk of Schistosoma mansoni (hookworm) coinfection by age, sex, socioeconomic status, elevation derived using ground maps, and land cover derived using satellite images, and mapped the risk profiling and spatial prediction of coinfection in Côte d'Ivoire.…”

Racial inequality in the annual risk of Tuberculosis infection in the United States, 1910–1933

“…Rural-to-urban migration following economic development can affect the physical environment in ways that make communities more susceptible to infectious diseases like TB and diarrheal disease [30,31], and such migration is expected to increase dramatically in the coming decades [32]. Historical data on reductions and disparities in TB mortality, paired with an understanding of the social and biological forces driving these patterns, are essential tools for developing theories and methods to more effectively combat present-day global inequalities in infection risk.…”

Community-Based Participatory Research Helps Farmers and Scientists to Manage Invasive Pests in the Ecuadorian Andes

“…The use of a normalized value of remoteness (see Eisenberg et al 2006) allows potential All data have been acquired from community members except precipitations. Mean precipitation data for each site during the study period was interpolated from meteorological stations data using the Worldclim layers available in the geographical information system (GIS) software Arcview 9.1 comparison with other studies.…”

“…The three bars of the box consist of the median and the upper and lower quartiles in the distribution. The endpoints of both whiskers indicate minimum and maximum values changes such as road rehabilitation that cause populations to move and settle in new ways can provide the opportunity to observe the relationship between environmental changes and invasive species dispersal (see Eisenberg et al 2006 for a similar example with the dispersal of human pathogens). In our study, the rehabilitation of the road between Guaranda and Simiatug had recently increased the exchanges between the two places (Culqui 2005) and is likely responsible for the relatively high PTM densities found in the village of Simiatug, otherwise isolated by natural barriers.…”

“…For example, additional analyses of insect population genetics could elucidate dispersal patterns across the landscape, and data on human migration patterns might provide information on causal linkages between remoteness and risks of the propagation of invasive species. In a similar vein, looking at changes in incidence compared with changes in remoteness over time may provide additional causal information about how road development affects invasive pest dispersal, because the time scale of these social changes may take years or decades (Eisenberg et al 2006). The remoteness and large number of possible sampling sites in populated rural areas such as the Andes demands that scientists develop collaborations with local communities to carry out such studies in a timely and rigorous way.…”