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Kinh Doanh | caribbean university |

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110 in the Shade

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Published: April 9, 2012

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Q. Will climate change affect the incidence of diseases and medical conditions?

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A. Health experts say that global warming is already causing more deaths in many regions of the world.

There is increasing evidence of lives being lost both directly, to causes like heart and respiratory ills, and indirectly, as the animal vectors of disease spread to newly warmer areas, according to a review article in the journal Nature in 2005.

While no specific weather event can be directly linked to warming caused by greenhouse gases, the authors cited a two-week heat spell in Europe in the summer of 2003 that led to 22,000 to 45,000 heat-related deaths.

Diseases like malaria (spread by mosquitoes), plague (by fleas ) and Lyme disease (by ticks ) are predicted to surge as the carriers enjoy climate-related conquests of territory.

Famines related to drought weaken resistance to illnesses, and scarcity of clean water adds to the disease burden.

Disease patterns may alter in complicated and unpredictable ways because of climate change, other experts say .

A study last year in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene suggested that early snowmelt in Western states had led to drier soil in rodent burrows and fewer fleas to spread plague.

But a new study predicted an increase in Lyme disease in the Northeast this year after a warm winter. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

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