The Role of Human Behavior in Emergent Infectious Diseases

I read an interesting article today about how human behavior is shaping the patterns of emergent infectious diseases, this is not a particularly novel idea, but most research has focused not on human behavior but on the pathogen or on the hosts.  This particular article focused on research by Dr. Kathleen Alexander (from Virginia Tech) about diseases afflicting African Wild dogs (one of the most attractive canines on earth, if you ask me).   Human populations have brought the African wild dogs into frequent contact with domestic dogs, many of which carry canine distemper and rabies. These diseases are ravaging the wild packs. This kind of contact is one of the less obvious ways that human populations disrupt wild populations.

She examined how different human behaviors influence disease transmission between domestic dogs and the African wild dog, in two African countries, Kenya and Botswana.  The significant differences in ranging behavior that she found in domestic dogs in Kenya and Botswana, parallels the differences in disease-related mortality in African wild dog populations.  In Kenya, domestic dogs spend the day with grazing cattle, accompanied by herders, whereas in Botswana, domestic dogs remain in the village, since cattle normally graze unattended. The result, African wild dogs have much higher disease mortality rates in Kenya, where they have more contact with domestic dogs.  Read more about this topic here.