Historically, some diseases have been geographically limited, naturally confined to areas of the globe where the weather is right for their spread. Mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue fever are good examples, because they only proliferate in areas where the temperature and rainfall are beneficial for the mosquito population to grow, as well as for the disease itself to flourish.
However, as the Earth heats up due to air pollution, more and more of the world fits those conditions — and dengue fever is already becoming a more widespread problem, as a new study covered by the Stanford Report revealed.
What’s happening?
The study was conducted by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, Arizona State University, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. It was published in September in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers examined how much the Earth’s rising temperature will increase cases of dengue fever in the future — and how much it already has.
“The effects of temperature were much larger than I expected,” said lead author Marissa Childs, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Washington, per the Stanford Report. “Even small shifts in temperature can have a big impact for dengue transmission, and we’re already seeing the fingerprint of climate warming.”
So exactly how large was that fingerprint? After examining 1.4 million cases of the disease across 21 countries, researchers determined that climate change is responsible for an additional 4.6 million infections each year, representing an 18% increase in the disease’s incidence. By 2050, the rate could climb another 49% to 76%.
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Why is this result important?
Dengue fever, also called “breakbone fever,” is a painful and potentially serious illness. In severe cases, it can cause debilitating pain and can lead to death. According to the World Health Organization, those who contract it more than once are at greater risk of experiencing a severe case. And as the world heats up, more and more people who have never been exposed to this illness before are now at risk — a fact which has already had a death toll.
“This is not just hypothetical future change but a large amount of human suffering that has already happened because of warming-driven dengue transmission,” said senior author Erin Mordecai, a professor of biology from the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, per the Stanford Report. “Climate change is not just affecting the weather — it has cascading consequences for human health, including fueling disease transmission by mosquitoes.”
What’s being done about dengue fever transmission?
Recent research into vaccinations has yielded results that promise to reduce the spread of dengue fever worldwide. Some local governments are also working on directly controlling the mosquito population to thereby stop the spread of the disease.
However, the only long-term solution for the broader problem of diseases that spread more rapidly in warmer temperatures is to reduce the Earth’s temperature by reducing air pollution.
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