Warmer, wetter conditions mean tropical diseases like dengue and chikungunya are spreading, says Lara Williams for Bloomberg Opinion.
LONDON: When you think of dangerous animals, the ones that typically spring to mind have teeth or claws. But what about wings and a proboscis?are nothing more than a nuisance. But in others, they spread tropical diseases that kill at least 700,000 people a year - more than any other animal, according to estimates from the World Health Organization . Unfortunately, they’re likely to get deadlier.
In Europe, the Asian tiger mosquito is now established in all of Italy, much of southern France and eastern Spain. It’s not just mosquitos that are enjoying the warmer temperatures, but a whole host of disease-spreading vectors, including ticks and even freshwater snails . Higher temperatures and increased humidity and rainfall boost the biting proclivities, reproductive rates and spatial distribution of these hosts.PREDICTING OUTBREAKS, PREVENTING DISEASE
There's been some progress with vaccines. Nigeria and Ghana have provisionally approved a new malaria vaccine developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, and Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical’s dengue shot is being steadily rolled out around the world.. Found in about 50 per cent of insects, it’s been shown to outcompete viruses like dengue, Zika and chikungunya in yellow fever mosquitoes, making them less likely to pass on the disease to humans.
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