Unseen Consequences: How Hurricanes Amplify Infectious Disease Spread in Vulnerable Regions
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Rodney Rohde
In this program:
What impact can hurricanes have on infectious disease spread? Medical laboratory scientist Dr. Rodney Rohde explains how hurricanes and other climate conditions amplify the spread of infectious diseases like malaria, dengue, and West Nile virus, among others.
Transcript
Deandre White:
So I do want to talk about how environmental factors can infect infectious diseases with people. So do you think hurricanes increase the spread and risk of infectious diseases, Dr. Rohde? And is this climate-related possibly?
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
As you guys know, I've been working in the field of zoonotic infections for really over three decades. So one of the benefits of working for a while in these areas is you get to kind of see the trends and the developments over a longitudinal timeframe. And so, one of the things right now that I think we understand and can unequivocally state is a yes, hurricanes and climate change, for example, do increase the spreading of infectious diseases. For example, let's talk a little bit about hurricanes, right? We just dealt with one in Texas where I'm at. Hurricane Beryl just came through, and we are seeing significant West Nile virus issues in the Houston, kind of in those subtropical areas of the Bay Area.
And that's what hurricanes do. They can create conditions that really increase the risk of disease transmission through things like flooding, displacing populations, and even overcrowding. And so just in common language, for example, you can have heavy, heavy rains. And when that happens, whether it's Texas or Pennsylvania or anywhere else, you have large runoff of water and if you are in areas that have farm animals or wildlife or even pounds, things like that, that might have large amounts of fecal content, urine and things like that from animals, then you have higher concentrations of bacteria in standing water.
After heavy rains that, as most people know, can increase favorable conditions for mosquito populations to amplify. Hurricanes just because of their power and really amazing winds at times can cause infrastructure damage like sanitation. So people don't always think about all that surge of tidal water and things like that, that you read about can overwhelm your water plants to create clean water. So now you have issues with water and all of that can increase disease transmission when you think about they can impact ecosystems and how the microbes that live there.
So if you can use your mind's eye to kind of visualize this, when those 100, 200 mile an hour winds and damaging rains and all that violent nature is going on, the wind and the water and hurricanes can actually aerosolize natural reservoirs of microbes and get them into the atmosphere. And so we could actually breathe them, inhale them, get them into our mouth, into our systems that way, and they can also transport them, right? So you can literally take something out of a particular area and maybe translocated hundreds of miles away that helps expand the geographical locations of fungi, different bacteria, things like that, parasites. And so all of that can contribute in many ways. So displacement, climate change just in general, we know climate change is happening. The science and the research shows it. And so displacement like hurricanes can even do things and we don't always think about this. But I always talk to people about it.
It can displace people, right? And so if you're looking at populations of people around the world and massive hurricanes are causing people to move or run from hurricanes, you can create a massive change in people coming across borders. And if those people are not being checked for different types of public health issues, you potentially could bring in a carrier of tuberculosis, for example. That could happen anywhere, anywhere, including in the United States. We have plenty of diseases right here that you could introduce or translocate something even within the U.S. How, even within the continental U.S.
And so it's just a public health thing to kind of think about environmental changes. So those temperatures that everybody kind of talks about, even small rises in temperatures that we are seeing globally, and it's been one of the hottest summers on record, right? Globally in the world, that allows certain things to prosper. I already mentioned fungi. Fungi tend to like warmer temperatures. So you're expanding those geographical abilities for that to occur. So when you think about these types of redistribution of rain, climate change, warmer temperatures, you can really promote and really redistribute vectors and vector-borne diseases.
We are seeing it right now. We are living in it, Deandre, because we are now seeing things like dengue and other types of viruses that are kind of popping up. There's been a handful of cases in Florida. We've had malaria popping up in Texas, Florida, even as far away as Maryland. And these are non-travel associated cases. So if you go back decades, America did have some malaria in the southern tropical states. We got rid of a lot of that, but we are seeing some resurgence of that. So all of these things, tropical, subtropical, shorter winters, longer summers, all of these things help expand the geographical distribution of these types of disease and vectors.
Deandre White:
I can't believe you said that there was malaria in Maryland. I can't imagine that.
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
Yeah, that one really caught me off guard. But yeah, there was a case that's in CDC’s, MMWR case studies that popped up in Maryland of all places, which is really not a tropical state. So again, it just kind of shows you this is happening right here in America as well, not just all over the world.
Deandre White:
And aside from warmer regions having more vectors for spreading disease per mosquitoes, and higher rates of physical contact, do you think that lower socioeconomic regions could have a higher risk of infectious disease when there are hurricanes just because of our pollution and trash and things of that sort?
Dr. Rodney Rohde:
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And it's an unfortunate reality even in the United States that we have areas that are socioeconomically are going to be a lower median income. We've got issues where people are not living in screened-in homes, for example. They're outdoors in the habitat and weather. And so yeah, you do see those types of impacts. It's just associated with all of those factors. There's no air conditioning, perhaps. They're outside, they're intense different populations. And then if you add that as we've talked about, comorbidities, so you have the socioeconomic impact, and then a lot of those people might have health issues like COPD and diabetes and other infectious diseases, and all of that means their body's immune system is way more susceptible to some of these types of infections. So it is a perfect storm, no pun intended when we have these types of events occurring in those types of areas.
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