Climate change triggering surge in infections – Report, as strange disease kills 10 in Kaduna

Health officials in the country have reported the death of 10 children aged between 3 and13 in Kafanchan, the Jama’a Local government area of Kaduna State.

This is as a medical report titled; ‘Climate Connections: A Warming planet, pathogens and diseases,’ and published by By Zola Teirstern, Grist, last Tuesday, July 18, has claimed that environmental changes occasioned by climate change in the planet is forcing some animals to shift to newer grounds and with it their diseases.

In Kaduna, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa Memorial Hospital, Dr. Isaac Nathaniel confirmed the outbreak of the unknown disease in Kafanchan, putting the figure of casualties at 10.

Meanwhile, health and environmental experts have posited that across the planet, animals, and the diseases they carry, are shifting to accommodate a globe on the fritz, as extreme weather, rising temperatures and animal migration bring with them consequencies of illness surge.

“And they’re not alone: Ticks, mosquitos, bacteria, algae, even fungi are on the move, shifting or expanding their historical ranges to adapt for climatic conditions that are changing at an extraordinary pace.

“These changes are not happening in a vacuum. Deforestation, mining, agriculture, and urban sprawl are taking bites out off the globe’s remaining wild areas, contributing to biodiversity loss that’s occurring at a rate unprecedented in human history. Populations of species that humans rely on for sustenance are dwindling and getting pushed into ever-smaller slices of habitat, creating new hotspots for diseases to jump from animals to humans.

“The number of people experiencing extreme repercussions of a warming planet continues to grow. Climate change displaces some 20 million every year, people who need housing, medical care, food, and other essentials that put strain on already fragile systems that are growing ever more stressed.

“All of these factors create conditions ripe for human illness. Diseases old and new are becoming more prevalent, and even cropping up in places they’ve never been found before. Researchers have begun piecing together a patchwork of evidence that illuminates the formidable threat climate-driven diseases currently pose to human health — and the scope of the dangers to come,” they said.

Rising temperatures

“This is not just something off in the future,” Neil Vora, a physician with the nonprofit Conservation International, said. “Climate change is here. People are suffering and dying right now.”

Research shows that climate change influences the spread of disease in a few major ways.

To escape rising temperatures in their native ranges, animals are beginning to move to higher, cooler elevations, bringing diseases with them. That poses a threat to people living in those areas, and it also leads to dangerous intermingling between animal newcomers and existing species.

Animal Migration

Bird flu, for example, has been spreading with greater ease among wild animals as rising seas and other factors push nesting bird species inland, where they’re more likely to run into other species. Diseases that jump between species tend to have an easier time eventually making the leap to humans.

Warmer winters and milder autumns and springs allow carriers of pathogens — ticks, mosquitos, and fleas, for example — to remain active for longer swaths of the year. Expanded active periods mean busier mating seasons and fewer casualties over the cold winter months. The Northeastern United States has seen a massive proliferation of Lyme disease-carrying black-legged ticks over the past decade, with warmer winters playing a decisive role in that trend.

Extreme Weather

Erratic weather patterns, such as periods of extreme drought and flooding, create conditions for diseases to spread. Cases of cholera, a water-borne bacterial disease, skyrocket during the monsoon season in South Asian countries when flooding contaminates drinking water, especially in places that lack quality sanitation infrastructure. Valley fever, a fungal-borne infection caused by spores that grow in the soil in the Western U.S., proliferates during periods of rain. The severe drought that tends to follow rain in that part of the world shrivels the fungal spores, which allow them to more easily disperse into the air at the slightest disturbance — a hiker’s boot, say, or a garden rake — and find their way into the human respiratory system.

These climate-driven impacts are taking a serious toll on human health. Cases of disease linked to mosquitos, ticks, and fleas tripled in the U.S. between 2004 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The threat extends beyond commonly recognized vector-borne diseases. Research shows more than half of all the pathogens known to cause disease in humans can be made worse by climate change.

“The problem compounds as time goes on. The World Health Organization estimates that between 2030 and 2050, just a handful of climate-related threats, such as malaria and water insecurity, will claim a quarter of a million additional lives each year.

“I think we’ve drastically underestimated not only how much climate change is already changing disease risks, but just how many kinds of risks are changing,” Colin Carlson, a global change biologist at Georgetown University, said.

“He noted that while connecting the dots between tick-borne illnesses and climate change, for example, is a relatively straightforward scientific endeavor, the scientific community and the general public need to be aware that the impacts of global warming on disease can also manifest in less obvious ways. The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, is an example of how quickly disease can move through global populations and how deeply complicated the public health response to such threats can get.

“I think there’s a lot more to worry about in terms of epidemic and pandemic threats,” he said.

“The world has the tools it needs — wildlife-surveillance networks, vaccines, early-warning systems — to mitigate the impacts of climate-driven disease. Some of these tools have already been tried on a local scale to great effect. What remains to be seen is how quickly governments, NGOs, medical providers, doctors, and the public can work across borders to develop and deploy a global plan of action.

“Mosquitos are moving to higher elevations — and so is malaria,” he report read.