'Physical factors play a more important role in the spread of disease than human factors'. Discuss.

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge the 'discuss' phrase in the question. This implies you need to evaluate both physical and human factors, and their role in the spread of disease, before ultimately deciding which you find to be more important. This question is mainly focusing on communicable disease spread rather than genetic disease as genetic diseases do not have the ability to be passed from one person to another. Physical factors relate to geographical features that limit the movement of disease which can include; natural barriers (such as mountains and oceans), amount of rainfall (which can either cause drought or flooding leading to waterborne diseases such as malaria) and climate change causing global temperature change (allowing vectors to move into previously uninhabited areas). Human factors are anything related to human activities this includes; issues such increased migration (exposing new populations to diseases they do not have immunity for) and human development (as more countries develop from LIDC to AC they improve sanitation and have access to clean water reducing the spread of communicable disease). Using the PEEL approach, of point evidence explain and link, you can use case study examples to help evaluate the factors against each other to try and gain the higher marks; by finding examples where either the human or physical factor was more important than the other. An example of this would be the Cholera outbreak in Haiti where Nepalese UN peacekeepers exposed a whole nation to Cholera where previously the ocean had restricted movement of the disease; thus making a human migration factor more important than a physical.