A disease is a certain condition that affects an organism by weakening the body’s general functions and psyche; it is also affiliated with particular symptoms and signs. The factors that contribute to an organism having a disease may be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic factors originate within a host and could be caused by a disorder from that host, which compromises the processes of body organs or genetic features of the host. Extrinsic factors are when a host comes into contact with an entity from outside and it enters the host’s system. A disease that is infectious commonly called infectious disease results from pathogenic microorganisms that transmit straight directly to individuals by physical contact or indirectly spread when someone sneezes or coughs (Nii-Trebi 2017). There are numerous types of diseases but recently with modern society, there has been an elevation of infectious diseases emerging due to globalization, trade, urbanization, travel, and human spread into new regions. As a result, these factors contribute to the formation of new infectious diseases such as SARs, MERS, and COVID-19, which have spread and caused the loss of countless human lives.
Factors of modern human societies which enhance the risk of new infectious diseases appearing and spreading.
Urbanization
Urbanization is one of the modern human social factors that have contributed to the formation of emerging infectious diseases. It's referred to as the expansion and settlement of individuals into urban surroundings and dates back to the 18th century of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was the epitome of urbanization, where individuals relocated to cities for the prosperity of improved education, increased income, and better overall health care. Now more than 54% of the world's population is urbanized with even countries such as Asia and Africa expected to have rapid advancement and development. However, with urbanization comes complications as some urban areas still experience unacceptable housing, inefficient ventilation, contaminated water, and inadequate hygiene. These are all perfect environments for infectious diseases such as soil-transmitted helminth infections, respiratory infections, and SARS. Furthermore, with the discrepancy of economies and advances in different countries, the meaning of an urban area altered as urban housing in Africa may not be considered urban in America and more rural. With rural areas classified as urban, which is prevalent in more low-income countries, the infectious disease causes one of the most deaths (Neiderud 2015).
“A country that is a great example of how urbanization has enhanced the risk of new infectious diseases appearing and spreading is China. China covers the majority of the world's population and has an essential role in the exchange of goods and services to other countries. In the past decades, China has experienced extensive economic growth, but this improvement to their economy comes at the risk of their environment and public health. The hasty rush of urbanization made China more prone to infectious diseases, and their health services were unable to improve to combat the emergence of new diseases. This is what allowed the spread of new diseases such as the coronavirus to appear and infect individuals in China and all over the world. Moreover, this is how urbanization in particular countries allows for the emergence of new infectious diseases to surface (Tong et al. 2015).”
Climate change
“Climate change is a very concerning matter in modern society as temperatures begin to rise, which causes warmer climates and extreme weather patterns; these weather conditions create a suitable condition where pathogens, hosts, and vectors can occur. Additionally, adjustments to the weather can facilitate the survival of particular infectious pathogens that cause diseases in humans. There is a possibility the changes in the weather could lead to new infectious diseases emerging as pathogen thrives in warmer weather, thus spreading and infecting humans. The numerous disease that arises from these fluctuations of weather could be vector-borne, water-bone, airborne and droplet-spread diseases. Vector-borne diseases come from sandflies and mosquitoes they are highly responsive to slight shifts to occasional and geographical distributions of weather. This means they are capable of spreading various diseases and what they spread could be modified due to the climate as it is known mosquitoes favor more humid environments to breed and spread. Water-borne diseases arise from inadequate sanitation and failure to provide clean drinking water, which is predominant in modern society. The inability to access clean drinking water and humidity in rural areas is a massive aspect of why waterborne diseases occur, which could also lead to new diseases emerging. Environmental factors are what contribute to airborne and droplet spread diseases, and these are magnified due to immense changes in climate (Dennis & Fisher 2018).”
“The weather in climate change such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, and storms that get amplified makes humans more susceptible to get infectious diseases. Heavy rains and storms can result in unsanitary sewer overflow and stoppage, as well as, excessive heat, which makes insects and rodents emerge, which are all factors that could cause the risk of new diseases to appear. Furthermore, depending on the country or region some are more vulnerable to infectious diseases than others as ways of countering these diseases are limited as climates modify. Climate change and its irregular weather patterns can amplify the materialize of certain new infectious diseases to spread to different areas and the rest of the world (Liang & Gong 2017).”
Migration/travel
“Migration can be defined as the process of individuals moving to certain areas with the objection of staying at their new location or seeking for another if not suitable. It is an essential part of human society as it allowed for the development of many countries and it is directed by political, socio-economic, and environmental factors. Migration has increased abundantly in the last decade as Western Europe, Spain, Russian, Ukraine, France, Italy, and Germany become one of the highest-migrated countries in the world (Castelli & Sulis 2017).” There have been positive aspects of migration as it has allowed for multiculturalism, diversity, trade, and economic growth in many countries. “Although this is the case it has also allowed for the spread of infectious diseases from all over the world as individuals move from one area to another. The movement from a new place to the next from rural areas or poverty can bring about new unknown diseases to certain countries, which can spread and cause an outbreak.
This correlates with travel as traveling has enabled individuals to move from all aspects of the world. However, traveling to rural countries has led to individuals bringing diseases back to their own country and even diseases that are new and had not been identified. This is the issue with modern travel as it is difficult to track who has been infected by what, and if so how to treat the infected individual (Torresi & Steffen 2017)”. This is how migration and travel have enhanced the risk of new infectious diseases occurring and spread as humans can transmit it to others all over the world.
Some modern diseases and how might they have been affected by these factors
Covid-19
“The coronavirus disease is also known commonly as COVID-19 is a highly contagious and pathogenic infectious disease resulting from extreme mild respiratory issues, which emerged from Wuhan, China. This is such as new infectious disease that its origins of it are unknown and there is no vaccination or anti-viral drug to treat the symptoms of cough, fever, and tiredness of the disease. However, it has been narrowed down to severely affect individuals who are old or have an underlying health issue such as asthma, diabetes, or a weak immune system. Nonetheless, this disease was never heard of until the spread of it by human societal factors such as urbanization and travel, which caused it to become an outbreak (Shereen at al. 2020).”
“The first case of the disease dated back to December of 18th of 2019 when an elderly individual was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, however, passed away due to the hospital's inability to treat the disease. This has been an issue with China as its rapid urbanization has not allowed improvements into their health care systems, thus causing new infectious diseases like COVID-19 to occur and spread. Also, since the disease was treated like the flu individuals dismissed it, and this allowed it to spread from China to the rest of the world. The symptoms take a few days to occur and since there were so many individuals traveling to and from China it was able to transmit to the rest of the world quickly (Rothan & Byrareddy 2020).”
MERS
“MERS is another form of novel coronavirus that had a similar outbreak to COVID-19 with its first occurrence in 2015. MERS presents symptoms that are very similar to COVID-19 as individuals who are infected may experience coughing, fever, headache or shortness of breath, but is manageable due to extensive care to control any outbreaks of this disease. The disease was first occurred in the Middle East and caused about 539 deaths, and quickly become a threat to health globally as it soon spread to South Korea. The complication this time was that individuals with MERS were traveling from Middle Eastern Countries back to South Korea which allowed it to spread and cause the death of many citizens. Traveling individuals was the major issue with MERS and any other diseases as it allowed for it not to isolate just to the middle east (Kim et al. 2015).”
SARS
“SARS was discovered the earliest out of all the novel coronaviruses as the first cases were identified in Hong Kong of 2003. The viruses were thought to only affected animals at the time, however, this was later proven wrong with human cases developing as more than 8000 individuals become infected. The symptoms of this disease are very similar to influenza and individuals who had it would have experienced fevers, headaches, difficulty in breathing, and immense tiredness. The factors that caused this virus to appear and spread was the urbanization of China, which allowed the disease to transmit so fast, and on top of that the extreme climates of China amplified the occurrence of the disease as it becomes a global outbreak (Wong et al. 2015).”
Conclusion
This report demonstrates how modern human societal factors such as urbanization, climate change, travel, and migration can facilitate the emergence of new infectious diseases. Individuals in urban areas can cause diseases to spread quickly to one another, while migration and travel can cause diseases to spread all over the world. Also, climate change can amplify and cause disease to frequently appear and provide the essential environment for it to stay. The newly emerged diseases such as Covid-19, MERS, and SARS are the result of these factors, which have caused them to appear and spread to thousands of individuals all over the world.
References
Castelli, F. and Sulis, G., 2017. Migration and infectious diseases. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 23(5), pp.283-289.
Dennis, S. and Fisher, D., 2018. Climate Change and Infectious Diseases: The Next 50 Years. Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore, 47(10), pp.401-404.
Kim, K.H., Tandi, T.E., Choi, J.W., Moon, J.M. and Kim, M.S., 2017. Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak in South Korea, 2015: epidemiology, characteristics, and public health implications. Journal of Hospital Infection, 95(2), pp.207-213.
Liang, L. and Gong, P., 2017. Climate change and human infectious diseases: A synthesis of research findings from global and Spatio-temporal perspectives. Environment international, 103, pp.99-108.
Neiderud, C.J., 2015. How urbanization affects the epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases. Infection ecology & epidemiology, 5(1), p.27060.
Nii-Trebi, N.I., 2017. Emerging and neglected infectious diseases: insights, advances, and challenges. BioMed research international, 2017.
Rothan, H.A., and Byrareddy, S.N., 2020. The epidemiology and pathogenesis of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. Journal of autoimmunity, p.102433.
Shereen, M.A., Khan, S., Kazmi, A., Bashir, N. and Siddique, R., 2020. COVID-19 infection: origin, transmission, and characteristics of human coronaviruses. Journal of Advanced Research.
Tong, M.X., Hansen, A., Hanson-Easey, S., Cameron, S., Xiang, J., Liu, Q., Sun, Y., Weinstein, P., Han, G.S., Williams, C. and Bi, P., 2015. Infectious diseases, urbanization and climate change: challenges in future China. International journal of environmental research and public health, 12(9), pp.11025-11036.
Torresi, J. and Steffen, R., 2017. Redefining priorities towards graded travel-related infectious disease research. Journal of travel medicine, 24(6).
Wong, G., Liu, W., Liu, Y., Zhou, B., Bi, Y. and Gao, G.F., 2015. MERS, SARS, and Ebola: the role of super-spreaders in infectious disease. Cell host & microbe, 18(4), pp.398-401.