More disease outbreaks in Europe with climate change: experts

Europe could face an increase in outbreaks of diseases carried by insects and rodents as the climate on the continent becomes hotter and wetter, EU health experts said Friday.

"These diseases are closely linked to climate change ... We need to address this risk," Renaud Lancelot of the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) told reporters in Stockholm.

Lancelot was one of 23 health experts from across Europe attending a two-day European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) meeting on the heightened risk of so-called vector-borne diseases, or illnesses carried by mosquitoes, sand-flies, ticks and rodents.

"The climate and environmental changes being predicted by experts will alter the risk to Europe from vector-borne diseases," ECDC head Zsuzsanna Jakab 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," she added.

In addition to climate change, the European Union agency also said the risk of such vector-borne diseases, which affect millions of people worldwide each year, was growing due to "globalisation and the increased travel and trade that it brings."

An example of the increased threat was seen last year, when a traveller who had been infected in India with chikungunya fever was bitten in northern Italy by a type of mosquito that can carry the disease and that recently arrived in Europe.

Nearly 250 people subsequently came down with the illness in what some experts said could be the first such outbreak outside the tropics.

"Authoritative climate scenarios for the future predict that many parts of Europe will become hotter and wetter," ECDC said.

"These changes are likely to impact on disease vectors, such as mosquitoes transmitting West Nile fever, chikungunya fever and possibly even dengue or Rift Valley fever," it added.

The agency cautioned that tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), which is considered one of the most dangerous infections of the central nervous system in Europe, had also been spreading rapidly across the continent.

"The number of human cases in all endemic regions of Europe has increased by almost 400 percent in the last 30 years," it said.

"We have to prepare for these risks," Denis Coulombier, the head of the ECDC's Preparedness and Response Unit, told the Stockholm press conference.

He called for health care workers and laboratory technicians across the continent to read up on vector-borne diseases to make sure they recognise them before they can cause a large outbreak.

"We need to have the capacity to rapidly respond when (these diseases) emerge," he insisted.

© 2008 AFP

Related stories:

Saving our bees: Ecologists assess the impact of people on pollinators
Most of the world's plant species rely on animals to transfer their pollen to other plants. The undisputed queen of these animal pollinators is the bee, made up of about 30,000 species worldwide, whose daily flights aid in the reproduction of more than half of the world's flowering plants. In recent years, however, an unprecedented and unexplained decline in bee populations across the U.S. and Europe has placed the health of ecosystems and the sustainability of crops in peril.
The way to a virus' 'heart' is through its enzymes
The arrival of bluetongue virus (BTV) in the UK last year posed a major threat to the economy and the increasing temperatures of our changing climate mean it is here to stay. If we are to fight this disease, which has had a major impact on farming already, we must discover how it works. A review published in the August issue of the Journal of General Virology outlines our current understanding of the "heart" of the virus, which may help us to develop antiviral therapies to treat many human pathogens.
New study suggests Columbus brought syphilis to Europe from New World
Did Columbus and his men introduce the syphilis pathogen into Renaissance Europe after contracting it during their voyage to the New World? Or does syphilis have a much longer history in the Old World? The most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis conducted on the family of bacteria (the treponemes) that cause syphilis and related diseases such as yaws, published Tuesday, January 15 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, supports the so-called “Columbian theory” of syphilis’s origins.
Toll of climate change on world food supply could be worse than thought
Global agriculture, already predicted to be stressed by climate change in coming decades, could go into steep, unanticipated declines in some regions due to complications that scientists have so far inadequately considered, say three new scientific reports.
Ticks challenge climate theory
As key players in the spread of disease ticks aren’t exactly man’s best friend but, according to Oxford University scientists, they may offer a vital clue that climate change is not to blame for an upsurge in many human diseases.
Global Warming And Your Health
Global warming could do more to hurt your health than simply threaten summertime heat stroke, says a public health physician. Although heat related illnesses and deaths will increase with the temperatures, climate change is expected to also attack human health with dirtier air and water, more flood-related accidents and injuries, threats to food supplies, hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, and stress on and possible collapse of many ecosystems that now purify our air and water.
Declining Snowpack in Rockies Cools CO2, Slows Gas Release from Winter Forest Soils
A decrease in Rocky Mountain snowfall has slowed the release of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas from forest soils into the atmosphere during the dead of winter, according to results of a new study.
'New' Science Gleans Knowledge From Ancient Lands And Societies
Understanding how pollution effects the dynamics of Earth and the spread of disease in ancient times are two areas in which ASU's new School of Human Evolution & Social Change can make a dramatic and immediate impact, said Sander van der Leeuw, director of the school.

News discussion:

Medicine & Health news