More disease outbreaks in Europe with climate change: experts
Pastor Dale Morgan
More disease outbreaks in Europe with climate change: experts*
STOCKHOLM, June 12 (AFP) Jun 12, 2008
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.