1st Edition
The Contextual Determinants of Malaria
As malaria and other tropical diseases continue their resurgence, questions about the potential impacts of environmental and demographic factors are becoming more critical. Recent attempts to understand the increase in malaria incidence often acknowledge the importance of social, economic and other contextual variables, but fail to explicitly incorporate them into models or consider how they evolve in relation to one another. This problem is of crucial interest to the climate policy community, which has been buffeted by claims and counter-claims concerning the impact of climate change on malaria. This important volume examines the contextual determinants of malaria and attempts to develop methods for incorporating them into projections of future incidence. Internationally renowned health specialists, economists, and other social scientists provide regional and global perspectives on risk modeling, the history of eradication efforts, current determinants (including environmental, social, and economic factors), and prospects for new vaccines and drugs. The Contextual Determinants of Malaria argues that an association of climate change with increased malaria incidence will have at least as much to do with human aging, poverty, urbanization, and population movement as with a rise in global temperatures. By placing climate in this perspective, The Contextual Determinants of Malaria focuses attention on the public health needs most critical in both the immediate and long-term future. It encourages multidisciplinary analysis of malaria control, and improves our understanding of the interactions of the diverse range of factors involved in the incidence and spread of the disease.
Biography
Elizabeth A. Casman is a research engineer in the department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Hadi Dowlatabadi holds a Canada Research Chair in Applied Mathematics at the University of British Columbia, and is a university fellow at Resources for the Future. Formerly, he was director of the Center for the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carnegie Mellon University.
'This book is an authoritative analysis of malaria as a public health issue, written for those interested in any but the wholly molecular aspects of infection.' The Lancet '...provides a broad perspective of the complexities of malaria epidemiology in the global sense, the diversity of transmission cycles in regional perspectives, and the simplicities of vector dynamics in local situations. Anyone who wishes to better understand the issues involved in the arguments about, and prospects for, impacts on malaria by climate change will benefit from reading this book' Journal of Vector Ecology