Impact of Climate Change on Livestock Health

Abstract

Currently, the world is facing a number of challenges, of which Global climate change is a priority area. Agriculture and livestock are amongst the most climate sensitive economic sectors in the developing countries. Climate change affects livestock health through several pathways. These includes effects on pathogens, such as higher temperatures affecting the rate of development of pathogens or parasites; effects on hosts, such as shifts in disease distribution that may affect susceptible animal populations; effects on vectors, such as changes in rainfall and temperature regimes that can affect both the distribution and the abundance of disease vectors; and effects on epidemiology, such as altered transmission rates between hosts. Furthermore, Climate change influences the emergence and proliferation of disease hosts or vectors and pathogens and their breeding, development and disease transmission. Consequently, it affects distributions and host–parasite relationships and its assemblages to new areas. Higher temperatures resulting from climate change may increase the rate of development of certain pathogens or parasites that have one or more life cycle stages outside their animal host. This may shorten generation times and, possibly, increase the total number of generations per year, leading to higher pathogen/ parasite population sizes. Mammalian cellular immunity can be suppressed following heightenedexposure to ultraviolet B. In particular, there is depression of the number of T helper 1 lymphocytes, the cells involved in the immune response to intracellular pathogens. Therefore, successful adaptations may be shown as better way of coping with the negative consequences of climate change on livestock health. This review work was conducted to explore the likely impacts of climate change on livestock health.