Currently, the world is facing a lot of challenges and it would be wise to understand that humans, environment, economy, and animals are integrated as one. It is imperative to understand that these factors are intertwined and mitigating any issues can be done only by predicting, and responding to them. Social, economy, and environment should be taken care altogether, otherwise, it is going to hit us terribly.
Now focussing on contagious diseases – it has been found that geographical or environmental factors such as temperature, soil types, altitude, ecoregions and socioeconomic factors such as poverty rate, cattle raising techniques, rural population percentage, GDP, and poverty rate are all interlinked in contributing to contagious diseases.
It has been found that the flora, fauna, and climate play a huge role in the occurrence of diseases. Now when human beings are invading the wildlife, it seems to have an adverse impact on human health and in the form of socio-economic and geographical determinants. “Spatial Analysis in Epidemiology” is one of the viable studies that indicate the same. It is important to know that other studies were also conducted to find the link such as geographical inter-relation, assessment of risk pertinent to the source, and disease mapping.
To further corroborate this claim, we can consider some of the events that happened in the past that took a toll on human health:
- One such historical is the smog in London that happened in 1952. The quality of air was compromised by many pollutants and increase in sulphur in the air led to hundreds of deaths.
- Japan faced a huge number of deaths when water was poisoned with methyl mercury which was resultant of a chemical factory. The fish were poisoned which inturn poisoned the people that consumed those fish.
- Another industrial catastrophe happened in India, famously called as the Bhopal Disaster happened in 1984. Tonnes and tonnes of methyl isocyanate were released killing thousands of people and many with the aftermath.
- The Chernobyl accident that happened in Europe seems to have affected a huge population when radioactive dust covered the area.
Urbanisation and industrialisation is yet another contributor to the environmental pollution that is affecting human health. The trend has been constantly growing and increasingly harmful especially in underdeveloped countries. It has led to a poor quality of living in these areas with polluted air, dirty drinking water, etc. Global warming and greenhouse effect are one of the adverse results of industrialisation with more carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere.
In conclusion, socio-economic and environmental factors do have a strong influence over the health of human beings. It is about time, humans started realising this and did something about cleaning the environment that is not physically but on many levels.
