Climate change and infectious diseases

Today, viruses can spread around the world quickly and if they meet up with the right environmental conditions cause damage to people’s health and the economy. Zoonoses, diseases which can transfer from animals to humans, are on the rise. This volume contains articles from a symposium that consolidates the latest findings on climate change and the impact of climatic factors on infections made by experts studying climate research, biology and infectology. The impact of climatic changes on evolution and biodiversity are also discussed. The significance of climate change on the occurrence of infectious diseases is acknowledged even when a concrete impact has so far been difficult to document. The monitoring of vector and reservoir populations and the corresponding pathogens are of increasing importance; in doing so a long-term approach to the investigations has to be made in order to record dynamics over longer periods of time.