Infectious Diseases, One Health and Climate Change

Dr. Irfan conducts multi-disciplinary research in infectious diseases, zoonotic diseases and One Health (human-animal-environment interface), and climate change. Zoonotic diseases are caused by pathogens transmitted directly from animals to humans or indirectly via intermediate vector agents (mostly arthropods). Around 61% of all infectious diseases are zoonotic, and 75% of emerging infections originate from animals. Climate change, urbanization, and deforestation, increase the risk of zoonotic diseases due to migration and proximity of humans and animals, land-use changes, elevated temperatures, hydroclimatic changes and extreme events. A One Health approach at the human-animal-environment interface is recommended for prevention and control of zoonotic diseases. We aim to study the impact of climate change on zoonotic diseases at multiple scales (meteorological, extreme events, land use change, vector, epidemiology, health policy, and population displacement) through the One Health approach.

Publications

• Rego RT, Kenney B, Ngugi AK, Espira L, Orwa J, Siwo GH, Sefa C, Shah J, Weinheimer-Haus E, Sophie Delius AJ, Pape UJ, Irfan FB, Abubakar A, Shah R, Wagner A, Kolars J, Boulton ML, Hofer T, Waljee AK. COVID-19 vaccination refusal trends in Kenya over 2021. Vaccine. 2023 Jan 27;41(5):1161-1168.
• Saggu SR, Preethi L, Satapathy P, Manna S, Tipirisetty ES, Afsar AP, Ravindra K, Chakravarty K, Irfan FB, Sah R, Padhi BK. Acute necrotizing encephalitis outbreak in India: A little-known disease among the adult population. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2023 Jan;107:383-384.
• Noreen N, Rehman SAU, Naveed I, Niazi SUK, Irfan FB. Pakistan's COVID-19 Outbreak Preparedness and Response: A Situational Analysis. Health Secur. 2021 Nov;19(6):605-615.
• Naseem M, Arshad H, Hashmi SA, Irfan F, Ahmed FS. Predicting mortality in SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) positive patients in the inpatient setting using a novel deep neural network. Int J Med Inform. 2021 Aug 21;154:104556.