Gasping for a drop

The most recent edition of Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, features a series of articles on the theme of water shortage. Not only does the editor single out Australia for special mention of its challenging water supply problems, but sunny old Perth is singled out for special mention on the featured world map of water shortage.

The Atlas of Water, 2nd edn, Black & King

The map was reproduced from Black & King’s Atlas of Water. The μGnome has a soft spot for maps, probably because of their ability to depict complex aspects of our environment in ways that can be used to explain the geographic distribution of infectious diseases.

Water is clearly a big issue in Australia. Perhaps surprisingly, not only because there isn’t enough in the South. In the northwest, we get so much that agriculture is expanding prodigiously to exploit the increased annual rainfall. This change in northern climate has been substantial, and may be starting to have an impact on the pattern of tropical infections that connect with the environment – melioidosis and arbovirus infection, to mention two.

Is the climate putting us at greater risk of other infections? The issues are complex, and surveillance correspondingly difficult. Perhaps we are developing a septic climate, and maybe that make the μGnome a climate septic. These issues need careful analysis, dispassionate consideration and sustained debate in order to develop a robust appreciation of the main drivers. There are clearly alternative explanations for changing patterns of environmental infection such as direct anthropogenic change, resulting from local anthropogenic alteration to the habitat microbes an humans cohabit.

The majority of the global ecosystem is rural and therefore managed by rural communities whose emerging infections are often seen as a footnote to the range of diseases that challenge wealthier urban communities. The μGnome wonders whether changing patterns of neglected tropical diseases among neglected rural populations might serve as an indicator of long term environmental stress. The series of articles in Geographical paint a bleak picture of what’s happening to some of those populations. Maybe it’s time to take closer look at geographic distribution of environmental infections and ask whether any changes could be explained by large scale environmental stress.