Climate change and its influence on zoonotic disease spread and emergence

Climate change plays one of the most important roles in the human and animal health causing serious long-term consequences for health and well-being. The earth's climate has changed in ways never seen before due to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere brought on by the burning of fossil fuels. The spread of zoonotic diseases from animals to humans gets influenced by various external and internal factors. Among all these, the climate change poses a serious threat to human health worldwide. It affects disease pathogens and their vectors' ability to survive, reproduce, and spread both directly and indirectly. Climate change may cause vectors to disperse or alter their geographic distribution, bringing diseases to previously uninfected areas. Changes in the geographic range and frequency of waterborne (like cholera) and vector-borne (like dengue and malaria) zoonotic illnesses are intensified by various climate drivers. Newly developing zoonotic illnesses include the Nipah virus, Avian Influenza H5N1, Rift Valley fever, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, and Plague. However, the effects of climate change are anticipated to be more severe in the developing world, where challenging socioeconomic and political conditions are aggravated by a lack of epidemiological research on zoonotic infections.