CLIMATE CHANGES AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: NEW EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most well-known phenomenon influencing the global climate variability at inter annual time scales. The term El Niño refers to the largescale ocean-atmosphere climate phenomenon linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (between approximately the International Date line and 120 degrees west longitude), and thus represents the warm phase of the ENSO, and is sometimes referred to as a Pacific warm episode. The opposite of which is La Niña, a cold phase of ENSO. Given the large size of the Pacific Ocean, changes in the sea surface temperature patterns and gradients across the basin influence atmospheric circulation with pronounced impacts on global tropical precipitation and temperature patterns. Building evidence of the links between ENSO driven climate anomalies and infectious diseases, particularly those transmitted by insects, the knowlodgment could allow providing improved long range forecasts of an epidemic or epizootic.