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