Globalization and Infectious Disease

Abstract

The human process of globalization is having profound impacts on the microscopic world of infectious disease. Increasing urbanization of rural areas allows old diseases such as influenza to mutate in new ways; the speed of travel facilitates the spread of disease on multiple continents at once; new technologies create new habitats for microscopic organisms to flourish and become virulent in; and climate change is expanding the habitats of mosquitoes that carry diseases such as malaria. As diseases mutate to these changing conditions they pose greater threats to human health. It is therefore vital that we do all that is possible to reduce these risks worldwide, both for reasons of prudence and out of a sense of moral duty.