{"id":20001124,"date":"2011-05-12T11:48:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T06:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/184.172.177.95\/~chinad\/?p=1124"},"modified":"2020-10-01T20:34:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T15:04:39","slug":"diseases-of-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/diseases-of-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Diseases of climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indian scientists say rising temperatures will make new areas of the Himalayas vulnerable to mosquito-spread diseases. Patralekha Chatterjee reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Be it film actors, bureaucrats or business tycoons, everyone is\u00a0keen to wade into the policy discourse on climate change in India today. But one area that is still not getting the attention it deserves is the health impacts of global warming. India\u2019s\u00a0National Action Plan on Climate Change<\/a>\u00a0identifies eight key \u201cmissions\u201d to tackle various aspects of the problem, but they do not include health impacts.<\/p>\n

\n

This could change in coming years as Indian scientists have begun to collect local evidence and make projections that link rising temperatures and humidity to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria. In a recent interview with\u00a0the third pole, a senior\u00a0World Health Organisation<\/a>\u00a0(WHO) official said there is evidence to suggest that rising temperatures in the Himalayan region could make many new areas vulnerable to malaria transmission.<\/p>\n

It is early days, but government-backed studies to assess the impacts of climate change on malaria and dengue have triggered lively discussion about adaptation strategies. The Ministry of Health now has a representative from the\u00a0National Institute of Malaria Research<\/a>\u00a0(NIMR) on the prime minister\u2019s Council on Climate Change.<\/p>\n

The NIMR \u2013 one of the leading institutes under the\u00a0Indian Council of Medical\u00a0Research<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 has carried out research in the Himalayan region and found incidents of malaria in hilly areas of Nainital district in Uttarakhand state in northern India. \u201cDengue was first reported in the district in 1996. Now it is being reported frequently. Similar phenomena have been noticed in Nepal and Bhutan, where dengue was reported for the first time in 2004,\u201d said Dr\u00a0Jai P Narain, director of the Department of Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments in\u00a0WHO\u2019s Regional Office for South-East Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last November, India\u2019s\u00a0Ministry of Environment and Forests<\/a>\u00a0released its first\u00a0assessment report<\/a>\u00a0of the projected impacts of climate change by the 2030s on key sectors in the country’s climate-sensitive regions, including the Himalayas and the north-east. The report was among the first to flag a\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0by scientists at the NIMR that established a nexus between climate change and health.\u00a0These studies<\/a>\u00a0suggest that climate change will significantly increase both the intensity and geographic spread of malaria and other vector-borne diseases in areas which have been largely insulated from them in the past.<\/p>\n

Based on regional climate projections made by the\u00a0Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology<\/a>\u00a0(IITM), a group of NIMR scientists led by Dr RC Dhiman looked at the effect of climate change on malaria transmission in four regions in India \u2013 the Himalayas, the coast, the\u00a0north-east<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Western Ghats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The IITM predicts that temperatures in the Himalayan region will increase by 0.9 degrees Celsius on 1970s levels, to 2.6 degrees, by the 2030s and rainfall intensity will increase from 2% to 12%. Based on these projections and their own field observations, Dhiman and his colleagues conclude that malaria is likely to spread into new areas of the states of Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and affect people for a longer period every year in the north-eastern states and other parts of the country. Of course, as the study points out, \u201cprojections based on climatic parameters should not be viewed with certainty for malaria incidence, since malaria transmission dynamics is a multi-factorial one, of which intervention measures play a major role.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, given the study concludes that climate change is \u201clikely\u201d to impact health in various regions across the country, the question becomes: what should be done about it?<\/p>\n

Dhiman told\u00a0the third pole:\u00a0\u201cIt is legitimate to ask why we should worry about malaria in a few more new pockets when so many districts are already malaria-endemic. But the real concern is the complete lack of awareness in areas which, to date, have not grappled with malaria. There is an urgent need to educate\u00a0health workers in areas which may not have seen malaria in the past but which could now confront the disease due to changes in relative humidity and temperature. At the moment, health workers in these areas have no idea what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth education has to begin with raising awareness of symptoms,\u201d said Dhiman. \u201cThe action plans for these new regions which could become susceptible to malaria with rising temperature and humidity have to incorporate lessons learnt from parts of the country which are already struggling with malaria.<\/p>\n

“Inaccessible terrain in hilly remote areas, lack of adherence to medication and incomplete treatment, advocacy in a language and idiom not understood by communities are some of the factors which act as roadblocks in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dhiman also pointed out cultural barriers to effective action: \u201cThere have been many instances where families have prevented health workers from spraying insecticide in corners where a deity may be standing.\u201d This leaves areas where mosquitoes can continue to breed and undermines attempts to prevent the spread of the disease.<\/p>\n

At least the spread of malaria due to climate change has been systematically studied and further studies on malaria and heat stress are in the pipeline. But the same cannot be said for other vector-borne diseases such as dengue and\u00a0chikungunya<\/a>, as WHO\u2019s Narains pointed out. Studies on the impact of climate change on nutrition as well as respiratory illnesses and water-borne diseases like\u00a0diarrhoea are also urgently needed, he said.<\/p>\n

WHO\u2019s South-East Asia Regional Office has developed standard practices to study the impact of\u00a0climate change on vector-borne and diarrhoeal diseases. \u201cTwo retrospective studies of vector-borne diseases in Nepal and diarrhoeal diseases in Kolkata, India, have just been completed and more studies are being carried out in other countries in south-east Asia,\u201d said Narain.<\/p>\n

According to hydrologists, one of the effects of climate change and the consequent faster-paced melting of glaciers in the Himalayas is that there will be more water in the north India\u2019s rivers for the next two decades, and subsequently far less water than now. In both cases, people will become more vulnerable to water-borne diseases like diarrhoea.<\/p>\n

The research findings have triggered policy responses. A task force established by India\u2019s\u00a0Ministry of Health & Family\u00a0Welfare<\/a>\u00a0is developing action plans for areas likely to be affected. But the real need is for local-level action to generate awareness\u00a0about the link between climate change and health. In vulnerable areas, communities need to be made aware of the symptoms of new diseases, methods of prevention and the importance of\u00a0intervention measures. Narain warns it is also necessary to \u201cstrengthen health infrastructure in terms of manpower, logistics, surveillance systems and new tools of intervention\u201d.<\/p>\n

Patralekha Chatterjee is a writer and photographer based in New Delhi.<\/p>\n

Homepage image from\u00a0Sanofi Pasteur<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Indian scientists say rising temperatures will make new areas of the Himalayas vulnerable to mosquito-spread diseases. Patralekha Chatterjee reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000188,"featured_media":20003045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[513,17827,519,551,50040707],"hashtags":[],"country":[20027489,20000111,20000113],"class_list":["post-20001124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-adaptation","tag-climate-impacts","tag-health","tag-the-third-pole","country-bhutan","country-india","country-nepal"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiseases of climate change | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Indian scientists say rising temperatures will make new areas of the Himalayas vulnerable to mosquito-spread diseases. 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