1st Edition

The Contextual Determinants of Malaria

Edited By Elizabeth A. Casman, Hadi Dowlatabadi Copyright 2003

    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.

    Foreword Workshop Participant List Preface Section 1: Malaria and Climate Change: Issues and Analytic Tools International Efforts to Understand the Linkage Between Climate Change and Malaria Anthony McMichael Of Malaria and Models: Challenges in Modeling Global Change and Malaria Risk Pim Martens with discussion by Duane Gubler Malaria Potential and Malaria Risk Elizabeth Casman Section 2: Regional Assessments: Contextual Determinants of Malaria Determinants of Malaria in the Americas Donald Roberts The Control of Malaria in Brazil Renato Gusm o Contextual Determinants of Malaria in the WHO European Region (Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia) Guido Sabatinelli Determinants of Malaria in Oceania and East Asia Allan Schapira Determinants of Malaria in South Asia Vinod Prakash Sharma with discussion by Robert Bos Determinants of Malaria in the Middle East and North Africa Andrei Beljaev Determinants of Malaria in Africa Jonathan St. H. Cox, Jean Mouchet, and David J. Bradley Section 3: A Changing Context Climate Variability, Climate Change and Malaria Reid Basher and Mark Cane Great Expectations: Antimalaria Vaccines and Drugs for the Next Century Robert Desowitz Future World Population Growth, Regional Distribution, Aging, Urbanisation and Climate Change Wolfgang Lutz Reading the Tea Leaves: Economic Scenarios for the 21st Century Lester Lave and Hadi Dowlatabadi Population Migration and Malaria Janice Longstreth and Anatole Kondrachine Recent Trends, Magnitude, and Patterns of Human Population Movement Ilya Fischhoff Malaria Control and the Future of International Public Health Socrates Litsios Section 4. Synthesis Integrated Assessment of Malaria Risk Baruch Fischhoff, Ilya Fischhoff, Elizabeth Casman, Hadi Dowlatabadi The Importance of Context in Defining Malaria Risk: Summary and Discussion

    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