In the period 2024-2028, the University of Bucharest will participate, through representatives of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, in a research funded by a Horizon Europe grant, which analyzes the effects of global warming and climatic extremes on some waterborne diseases. The consortium carrying out the research is led by Vanessa Harris, doctor of internal medicine and infectious diseases and teaching staff at the Department of Global Health, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Netherlands.
SPRINGS – Supporting Policy Regulations and Interventions to Negate aggravated Global diarrheal disease due to future climate Shocks
The SPRINGS consortium consists of Amsterdam UMC, AIGHD, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the University of Virginia, the University of Ghana, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Three O’Clock, Aarhus University, the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the University of Naples, the Haydom Lutheran Hospital, AQUATIM, the University of Bucharest and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.
The project will last 60 months and it seeks to understand how global warming and climate extremes such as heavy precipitation, flooding, and drought are increasing risks for waterborne diarrheal disease. Diarrhea is, globally, the third largest cause of death for children under 5. Contributing to more than 500,000 deaths, only pneumonia kills more children each year. Climate change, driving increased flooding and droughts, threatens the fragile progress made in reducing diarrheal disease burden over the past decades. “We see that the impact of climate change on diseases transmission depends on the constantly changing interaction between climate events, local vulnerabilities and exposure to disease,” says Vanessa Harris, Assistant Professor of Global Health at Amsterdam UMC. “For example, sudden heavy rain can cause sewers to overflow and contaminate water supplies or increasing temperatures can cause some pathogens to live longer outside the body,” explained professor Vanessa Harris.
The consortium will carry out research in Ghana, Tanzania, Romania and Italy. In all four countries, case study sites are chosen due to their susceptibility to both flooding and drought. However, there are also individual characteristics that will provide the consortium with unique insights. For example, in Naples, proximity to farming and agriculture, coupled with an aging urban water infrastructure provide added risks. Haydom, Tanzania is an extremely rural setting with high rates of malnutrition and poverty and increased exposures to food insecurity. The impacts of climate change on diarrheal disease burden will likely be magnified and cost-effective evidence-based adaptations and interventions are sorely needed.
In Romania, the project will study Timisoara, through a biomedical data managed by the local water company AQUATIM and ethnographic data about water consumption and water infrastructure in and around the city. The University of Bucharest will finance for three years a PhD student at the Department of Sociology supervised by professor Liviu Chelcea (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7629-3933), to carry out field research in Timisoara.
While these effects already burden low- and middle-income countries, where diarrheal diseases are the second leading cause of childhood deaths, Europe has shared and underappreciated vulnerabilities. There is an urgent need to prepare and protect our water and communities from these threats. The aims of the project are to inform key climate, environmental, and health adaptation policies, in order to support and prepare citizens, communities and governments by better measuring the impact of future climate shocks on the burden of water-borne diarrheal diseases. The project brings together scientists from climate, environment, health, and social sciences to collaborate with communities, industry, public authorities and policy makers across socioeconomic settings. The project will model the future impact of global climate change, on local water quality and quantity, and diarrheal disease outcomes. In case studies in Ghana, Tanzania, Italy, and Romania, we will measure current interactions of climate, behaviour, and water quality on pathogen-specific diarrheal disease risks and the safety of water supply systems. The project will engage individuals and communities to understand situated understandings and practices to improve risk communication and ownership. With policy makers, we will design appraisal structures to assess the economic impact and value of planetary health interventions to prevent climate-related diarrheal disease. The project will improve integrated climate and health surveillance, create climate-resilient water supply systems, engage citizens and stakeholders, and use evidence-based value assessments to prioritise interventions to prevent climate-induced diarrheal disease. Long term adaptive capacity and climate-resilience will increase in Europe and beyond, preventing unnecessary illness and deaths from waterborne diarrheal disease.
Proiectul SPRINGS – Supporting Policy Regulations and Interventions to Negate aggravated Global diarrheal disease due to future climate Shocks officially started on 1 January 2024, is a €6.5 million project that spans five years. The project is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme with Grant Agreement number 101057554.