Environmental Change and the Emergence of Infectious Diseases

In South America in the past decades several infectious diseases have emerged or re-emerged either as part of larger pandemics or as local processes involving autochthonous pathogens. These included arthropod-borne viral diseases, such as Dengue Fever, Chikungunya and Zika as well as viral hemorrhagic fevers, such as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Junin, Machupo and Guanarito viruses. Parasitic disease was also important such as Malaria, endemic in the northern part of the continent, Leishmaniasis and Chagas Disease. Carrion disease, a bacterial infection originally from the Andes region, also seems to be expanding geographically. Several social and environmental processes have contributed to the emergence of these pathogens, including human migration, deforestation, road and dam building and climate shifts. Due to its high biological diversity of wildlife, arthropods and virus species in still untouched natural ecosystems in the Amazon has the greatest regional potential for the emergence of new human infections.