Climate and Human Health: The Impact of Climate Change on Vector-Borne Diseases, Paphos, Cyprus (17–19 October 2012)

Introduction Climate change is expected to impact widely upon human health, including changes in the geographic distribution of vectors that carry severe diseases such as malaria, Dengue fever, Chikungunya, and others. Countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) have historically been devastated by such diseases, and may represent regions at particular future risk given projections of greater changes in climate than average global estimates. They also border regions where vector-borne diseases (VBDs) are endemic. The Cyprus Institute and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London recently established a close collaboration and modelling consortium to study the impacts of climate change on VBDs in the EMME, and facilitating this workshop to establish key challenges in the field represented an important first output of this collaboration. Over three days from 17th to 19th October 2012, researchers from Cyprus, the UK, several European countries, the USA, and Israel provided an overview of recent research into climate impacts on VBDs, discussing, in particular, how better projections of climate change impacts on these diseases may be obtained in future work. The development of tools such as mathematical models to help plan strategies for the control of both vectors and the diseases they transmit formed a key focus; the greatest threats to the EMME were also identified and the climatic sensitivity of these diseases was discussed at length.