[SEMCO] Lecture by Rita Colwell Updated

[Judith McDowell]

*CLIMATE, OCEANS, HUMAN HEALTH, AND CHOLERA*
*Tuesday, March 7th, 4:00pm*
*Northwest Building B101, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
**Free and open to the public*

The Planetary Health Alliance hosts a lecture with Dr. Rita Colwell, a 
Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and 
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and former 
director of the National Science Foundation. Human health is assumed to 
be strongly linked to both environmental quality and climate, but  only 
in recent years has scientific evidence accumulated sufficiently to move 
from correlation to causation.  Studies of water borne diseases have 
shown a strong link with climate, especially climate extremes. Useful 
examples of this connection are infections caused by Vibrio spp., 
including Vibrio cholerae.  Outbreaks of cholera have been shown to be 
linked to climate cycles and extremes. Since Vibrio cholerae and related 
Vibrio spp. are native to the aquatic environment in semi-tropical and 
tropical areas of the world, serious epidemics of cholera continue to 
occur in countries subject to both environmental and climate stresses, 
e.g., Haiti, Africa, and Bangladesh.  Results of research on water borne 
diseases, employing genomics, including gut metagenomics analysis of 
cholera patients, and satellite monitoring of environmental parameters, 
will be presented in predictive models.  Evidence of polymicrobial 
infections in diarrhoeal disease, based on bioinformatics analysis of 
next generation sequencing data will be presented.

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