Infectious Diseases and Their Outbreaks in Asia-Pacific: Biodiversity and Its Regulation Loss Matter
Despite increasing control measures, numerous parasitic and infectious diseases are emerging, re-emerging or causing recurrent outbreaks particularly in Asia and the Pacific region, a hot spot of both infectious disease emergence and biodiversity at risk. We investigate how biodiversity affects th...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
PLOS
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/1573/1/Serge.pdf http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/1573/ http://10.1371/journal.pone.0090032 |
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| Summary: | Despite increasing control measures, numerous parasitic and infectious diseases are emerging, re-emerging or causing
recurrent outbreaks particularly in Asia and the Pacific region, a hot spot of both infectious disease emergence and
biodiversity at risk. We investigate how biodiversity affects the distribution of infectious diseases and their outbreaks in this
region, taking into account socio-economics (population size, GDP, public health expenditure), geography (latitude and
nation size), climate (precipitation, temperature) and biodiversity (bird and mammal species richness, forest cover, mammal
and bird species at threat). We show, among countries, that the overall richness of infectious diseases is positively correlated
with the richness of birds and mammals, but the number of zoonotic disease outbreaks is positively correlated with the
number of threatened mammal and bird species and the number of vector-borne disease outbreaks is negatively correlated
with forest cover. These results suggest that, among countries, biodiversity is a source of pathogens, but also that the loss of
biodiversity or its regulation, as measured by forest cover or threatened species, seems to be associated with an increase in
zoonotic and vector-borne disease outbreaks. |
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