Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Climate Change Brings Disease

As climate change brings warmer temperatures, disease threats are shifting - and this year Kathmandu, Nepal's capital in the Himalayan foothills, is seeing an unprecedented surge of dengue fever.

Meghnath Dhimal, chief research officer at the government's Nepal Health Research Council, said rising temperatures associated with climate change are the major driver of the new threat.

"In Nepal, the first outbreak of this disease occurred in 2006, when only five districts were affected. But this year the disease was found in 56 out of 77 districts," he said.

Warmer conditions help spread the disease both by making it easier for mosquitoes to reproduce, and by spurring the virus itself to replicate faster. But "migration of infected mosquitoes and human cases from the tropical parts of Nepal plays a role in seeding the disease" in new areas, he said.
Because there is no vaccine or particular medicine to treat dengue, reducing the number of mosquitoes is the main way to reduce its spread, Dhimal said.
But Nepal's government, confronted with a fast-rising threat, so far has not put in place enough programs to do that, he said.
"As the highlands were rarely previously affected by dengue, people and government officials are not well-prepared to prevent and control the disease" he said. In most cases, efforts to battle the problem start "only after it has gained ground", he said.
That means "the insects that are not eliminated this year will lay eggs and surge again next year after it starts getting to a favourable temperature," Dhimal said.
Another obstacle in controlling the disease is simply the lack of awareness of many people about the emerging threat. For example, residents may protect themselves against mosquito bites at night, but the dengue-carrying mosquito bites during the day, something few people in Kathmandu know, he said.



1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/philippines-worst-dengue-outbreak-years-kills-thousand-190917020550489.html

Philippines: Worst dengue outbreak in years kills over a thousand
Some 271,480 dengue cases reported since January, 1,107 confirmed fatalities as of end of August

"We cannot accept the 1,000 deaths related to dengue. With proper treatment, you do not die from dengue."

According to the WHO report, 124,751 cases of dengue were recorded in Vietnam, 85,270 in Malaysia and 10,206 in Singapore as of the end of August

"A dengue outbreak is not exactly a new phenomenon. We have seen this happen every four to five years and it is often linked to changing weather patterns," said Rabindra Abeyasinghe, Philippines representative for the WHO. But higher temperatures and longer rainy seasons contribute to the scale of the outbreak, as can a change in the type of dengue virus, he added.