LONDON (Reuters) – Dengue will become a major threat in the southern United States, southern Europe and new parts of Africa this decade, the World Organization’s chief scientist said of Health (WHO), Jeremy Farrar, warmer temperatures create conditions conducive to the spread of mosquitoes carrying the disease.
Dengue is an infectious disease transmitted by mosquitoes that people can contract up to four times in their life and causes around 20,000 deaths per year. Incidence rates have already increased eightfold worldwide since 2000, largely due to climate change, increased population movements and urbanization.
“We need to talk about dengue much more proactively,” Jeremy Farrar, who joined the WHO last May, told Reuters.
“We really need to prepare countries to deal with the additional pressure that will come to bear in many, many large cities in the future.”
Jeremy Farrar added that the infectious disease was likely to “take off” and become endemic in parts of the United States, Europe and Africa as global warming makes new areas hospitable to the mosquitoes that spread it .
“Clinical care is really intensive and requires a high ratio of nurses to patients,” he said. “I am really concerned to see this problem growing in sub-Saharan Africa.
Adequate prevention would include triage plans for hospitals as well as scientific innovation, alongside other key factors, such as urban planning, to avoid areas of standing water near or in homes, a he added.
“We need to combine different sectors that are not used to working together.”
(Report by Jennifer Rigby, French version by Augustin Turpin, edited by Kate Entringer)
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