Global warming will up the aggressiveness of dengue, malaria

Oct 30, 2012 12:32 GMT  ·  By
Global warming will up the global mosquito population, lead to more cases of malaria and dengue fever
   Global warming will up the global mosquito population, lead to more cases of malaria and dengue fever

It may very well be that climate change stands to make fruit flies a thing of the past, yet the world's population of dangerous mosquitoes is quite likely to increase.

According to a new report made public by the World Health Organization, the environmental shifts brought about by climate change and global warming will make some mosquitoes significantly more dangerous and deadly than they presently are.

Apparently, this is because the predicted increase in average temperatures worldwide will translate into diseases such as dengue and malaria becoming ever more aggressive, Economic Times explains.

According to the specialists who looked into this issue, both dengue and malaria are extremely responsive to the changes occurring in their surrounding environments.

To cut a long story short, increased temperatures are known to up their development rates, especially in remote parts of the world.

As well as this, the World Health Organization fears that two opposite extreme weather manifestations (i.e. heavy rainfall and long periods of drought) will cause a boost in the mosquitoes' population.

This is both because relatively large areas of standing water will be created during heavy rainfall, and because people living in poor areas will be left with no choice but to stock water close to their homes whenever droughts hit.

“Many of the major killers such as malnutrition, malaria and dengue are highly climate-sensitive and are expected to worsen as the climate changes,” the World Health Organization explained.

Furthermore, “Studies suggest that climate change could expose and additional 2 billion people to dengue transmission by the 2080s. Infection could range from a mild flu-like fever to the potentially fatal severe dengue, which particularly affects individuals who are exposed to one of the four different strains of the virus as a secondary infection.”

Various estimates show that, when compared to average global temperatures at the beginning of the 1900s, today's average world temperatures are higher by 0.75 degrees Celsius.