Climate change enables spread of disease worldwide
Climate changes that enable Asian Tiger mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects and animals to flourish in Europe threaten the region's residents, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said.
Climate changes and the environmental alterations they cause may lead to an increase in the outbreaks of diseases such as hantavirus and dengue, West Nile and chikungunya fevers, which the animals carry and which have posed little, if any, threat to public health in the area, the ECDC said.
"The climate and environmental changes being predicted by experts will alter the risk to Europe from vector-borne diseases," Zsuzsanna Jakab, the ECDC's director, said in a statement. "We are likely to see the spread of diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis or even chikungunya fever to places where they have not been seen before."
The outlook echoes predictions made earlier this year as experts grapple with the implications of climate change for human health. Changing climate patterns may expose as many as 400 million more people to malaria, the United Nations said in a November report. The ECDC held a meeting in Stockholm this week to assess the risk. Their final report will be released "in the coming months."
Last year, cases of hantavirus infections hit an all-time high of 2,195 in Sweden after a warm winter left bank voles with little snow cover and the rodents sought warmth and protection from predators in wood piles, Lisa Pettersson, a clinical virologist at the Umeaa University Hospital.
"A lot of people in northern Sweden burn wood" and contracted the virus by handling firewood on which the animals had urinated and defecated, said Pettersson, lead author of an article in May's Emerging Infectious Diseases. "Most patients say this is the worst thing they have ever gone through."
People who contract the virus experience fever, chills, headaches, nausea and pain, and about one-third of the Swedish patients had to be hospitalized. There is no vaccine or drug to combat the virus, which is also carried by rodents in North America.
Higher temperatures also make the region more hospitable to the animals and insects that carry the viruses. In the U.S., climate change already is causing animals, and the diseases they carry, to migrate, Howard Frumkin, head of the National Center for Environmental Health, said in April testimony to Congress.
Last summer, Europe had its first outbreak of chikungunya fever in a region of Italy to where a type of mosquito that can carry the virus had migrated. Chikungunya fever, a virus for which there is no cure, is characterized by high fever, severe joint and muscle pain and headaches.
The name means "to become contorted" in Kimakonde, an African language, and describes patients' stooped frames, the World Health Organization says on its Web site. The disease typically occurs in Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
Experts at ECDC believe a local resident of the affected area in Italy, which lies about 4 miles from the Adriatic coast, contracted the disease after being bitten by a disease-carrying mosquito while he was in India.
Once back in Italy, the resident likely passed the virus on to other mosquitoes that bit him. From June 15 to Sept. 21, 292 suspected cases were reported even as health authorities sought to rid the region of the bugs. The affected area has a population of about 3,767.
"More deadly" mosquito strains may infest British wetlands, causing malaria outbreaks, the U.K. Health Protection Agency said in a February report. Illnesses such as Lyme disease, carried by ticks, are likely to become more common if climate changes are left unchecked.