More than half of the infectious diseases known to impact humans are being aggravated by climate change, scientists reported Monday in a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change. The research found that illnesses like hepatitis, cholera, malaria, and hundreds of others were spreading faster, expanding in range, and becoming more severe because of climate-related events.
It’s not just transmission that’s increasing; climate change is also making it harder to fight off these diseases by reducing people’s health, immunity, and access to medical care, the researchers concluded.
“Global health response to the diversity of these diseases will need to be massive,” said Erik Franklin, an associate research professor at the University of Hawai’i and one of the authors of the study. “It’s another piece of evidence that we’re in trouble. It’s a call to arms to rapidly decrease our greenhouse gas emissions load.”
The research, led by scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, focused on 10 kinds of extreme weather events exacerbated by greenhouse gases, including floods, heat waves, drought, and wildfires. The […]
Even a case of POLIO, which was wiped out a long time ago, has turned up in NEW YORK CITY, of all places. From there, it could spread around the country, or even the world with all the travel that goes in and out of NYC.