A Review of the Effects of Climate Change with an Emphasis on Burden of Waterborne Diseases

Background and Purpose: Climate change has major impact on water cycle, resulting in effects on water resources, the frequency and severity of droughts, floods due to severe rainfall, natural environments, society, and economics and human health.  In this paper, surveys on different models of climate change as well as the effects of climate change on the burden of waterborne diseases and also, the strengths and weaknesses of the study methodology have been reviewed. Materials and Methods: The key words “climate change”, “water borne disease”, “temperature change”, burden of disease” were used in combination with the Boolean operators “OR” and “AND”. The researchers did electronic search on PubMed, Science Direct, Springer Link, and Google Scholar. The search was conducted with publication year limitation between January 2005 to June 2017. Results: From 152 original articles, 54 papers were about modeling of climate change, 74 papers indicated the effect of climate change on infection disease, and 24 papers surveyed the water quality impact. The reviewed literature showed that, most studies had been conducted in rich countries, and the estimates of the burden of disease due to climate change were uncertain for the following reasons: 1- Uncertainty about the climate changes due to changes in greenhouse gas emissions 2- Uncertainty about the direct and indirect relationship between the climate and human health 3-Uncertainty about the relationship between climate and health as a result of socioeconomic changes in the future. Conclusion: Uncertainty in these estimates has led to little studies in this regard.