At Europe Biobank Week, the largest biobanking conference in Europe, held on 20 May at the Prague Congress Centre, Czech Republic, Dr. Joacim Röcklov delivered the keynote lecture on climate change and infectious disease.
The keynote addressed how climate change is reshaping infectious disease dynamics across Europe. Rising temperatures and other changing climatic conditions contribute to the emergence of outbreaks that were once rare. Central to a targeted and strategic response to the health impacts of climate change is effective climate diagnosis. That is continuously tracking and analysing what is happening right now in the field of climate change and infectious diseases using technology and models.
As climate change is not acting in isolation, ecological data, land use patterns, human mobility, and socioeconomic factors, and an understanding of climate change that has happened since industrialisation are all important in analysing how disease emerges and spreads.
The talk also pointed out that biobanks can contribute to addressing the critical data gap existing in research. At present, research efforts remain uneven due to limited and inconsistent data availability. Climate conditions vary significantly across geographical regions; studying spatial contrasts can enhance understanding of disease dynamics. By comparing climate data from different regions, researchers can identify patterns and relationships more quickly than relying solely on long-term observations from a single location. Biobanks can play a vital role in strengthening research capacity in this area.
Image credits © Europe Biobank Week.
