Direct and Indirect Social Drivers and Impacts of Vector-Borne Diseases

Abstract

Vector borne diseases (VBDs) are often seen by the highly developed nations of the world as an issue of poor tropical countries. While framing the problem this way—through the paradigm of a poverty-trap—may leverage aid and motivate political will toward disease control, it misses a wide range of socio-political contexts both driving, and driven by, vector borne diseases. In this chapter, we present a series of global vignettes, to illustrate different facets of the broad remit of social drivers and interactions with VBDs. We approach the urban social-ecological context in Latin America and the Caribbean, impacts and aftermath of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tropical storms, struggles with trust in intervention implementation in Haiti, and drivers and impacts of ruminant arbovirus emergence events in Europe. We conclude that incorporating an understanding of social context, including political history and cultural perceptions, is a key part of VBD research and intervention practice.