Environmental Indicators of Enteric Infections and water safety in Southern India

Elena Naumova, Associate Dean for Research and Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director, the Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases at Tufts University

Enteric infectious diseases continue to cause morbidity and mortality in India, especially in infants and children with an estimated 2-5 million deaths annually in preschool children. Water contamination in both urban and rural parts of this region is a serious problem in all seasons, and results in diarrheal disease in both epidemic and endemic forms. India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the United States Department of Health and Human Services signed a bi-lateral joint Statement to support Indo-U.S. Collaboration on Environmental and Occupational Health. Under this agreement we had completed a multiyear project, approved by the Joint Working Group (JWG) is conducted by the team of researchers from Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, India and Tufts University Schools of Medicine and Engineering, Boston/Medford, USA. Our goal was to compare the risk of enteric infection from the domestic and external environment in urban and rural areas by assessing environmental factors, including nature of land use, population density, water source and sanitation practices, incorporating data on air and soil temperature, rainfall and season to build mathematical models of the transmission dynamics of enteric infections. This proposal assumes there are multiple channels of exposure from multiple sources for enteric infections and that geographic, environmental and possibly cultural factors interact to maintain unsafe water and continued transmission of endemic enteric infections.Dr. Naumova will talk about how Tufts students participated in this study and how their work contributed to the success of our collaboration.

This event is part of the Lunch and Learn series sponsored by the Environmental Studies department. See the full line-up of presenters for the spring here.