As one of Discover Magazine’s Top 50 women in the field of science, Mercedes Pascual is known for her work on the relationship between environment and disease in the developing world.
She discussed climate-driven infectious diseases with students and faculty in the Baker Center on Thursday. The discussion was hosted by the Baker Center’s Interdisciplinary Group on Energy and Environmental Policy.
Pascual focused on understanding the effects of weather patterns on the spread of cholera and malaria, specifically in India and Bangladesh. Her experience includes a professorship in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan.
She believes the spread of water-borne illness is closely tied to environmental phenomenon.
“I have studied cholera in Bangladesh, and land use changes in irrigation in connection to malaria,” Pascual said. “My main result was that the spatial heterogeneity is extremely significant.”
Socioeconomic conditions also have a great impact on disease dissemination.
“Sanitation connected to poverty and living conditions are related,” Pascual said. “Cholera outbreaks are driven by climate variability.”
Pascual has recently studied the impacts of monsoons on incidents of malaria in India.
“There are intermittent large peaks of malaria, obviously related to large amounts of rainfall,” Pascual said.
India has attempted to reduce the occurrences of malaria outbreaks by enacting environmental control factors. Several different methods are aimed at tackling the problem. Primarily, India has focused on eliminating the organisms that carry the disease. Innovative techniques in irrigation have also been enacted.
These measures have helped, but there are phases of extreme outbreak.
“The risk of disease has not disappeared, and relapses occur when controls like Insecticide Residual Spraying are reduced,” Pascual said.
India has seen varied results from its control regimes, primarily as a result of environmental influence.
“Places using the highest control levels often still have a higher prevalence of malaria,” Pascual said. “Irrigation may have actually increased the risk. This is an interesting result, because irrigation should get you to regional elimination. In time, though, there is a transition regime of over a decade where you have a higher risk for the disease. Control must be dynamic, because these areas are under climate variability.”
Following the lecture, several professors asked questions to learn more about her research.
“If you had the opportunity to have funding to do something new, would it be data collection or education? … What would allow you to move the science to public policy?” Lou Gross, professor of ecology, asked.
“In many cases better data could help,” Pascual said. “I should say that data exists but putting it together is an incredible effort. Data are a big limiting factor for some of the work we do. We need better ways to communicate between people making policy and people on the ground.”
India has seen varied results from its control regimes, primarily as a result of environmental influence.
“Places using the highest control levels often still have a higher prevalence of malaria,” Pascual said. “Irrigation may have actually increased the risk. This is an interesting result, because irrigation should get you to regional elimination. In time, though, there is a transition regime of over a decade where you have a higher risk for the disease. Control must be dynamic, because these areas are under climate variability.”
Following the lecture, several professors asked questions to learn more about her research.
“If you had the opportunity to have funding to do something new, would it be data collection or education? … What would allow you to move the science to public policy?” Lou Gross, professor of ecology, asked.
“In many cases better data could help,” Pascual said. “I should say that data exists but putting it together is an incredible effort. Data are a big limiting factor for some of the work we do. We need better ways to communicate between people making policy and people on the ground.”
