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A new study predicts that climate change will result in the exposure of millions of additional people, especially in Europe, to mosquito-borne diseases over the next decades.
Two of the most dangerous mosquitoes in the world, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, are known to thrive in hot climates, most effectively spreading viruses such as dengue, yellow fever and zika at 26-29 ° C.
Mosquitoes are currently threatening more than a billion people around the world. But scientists say that when the world warms – expected result of climate change – they will migrate to the poles, exposing millions of others to the diseases they carry.
"We wanted to demonstrate the future impact of climate change on the risk of spreading vector-borne diseases – in this case, by two very tenacious global invaders," Sadie J Ryan, an associate professor of medical geography at the University of Ottawa. University of Florida, says Al Jazeera.
The researchers, whose study was published last week in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, have developed a model for them to track the evolution of global warming scenarios over the next century.
As a result, they were able to determine where mosquitoes might migrate and how the diseases they carry could affect the inhabitants of these areas.
"In the next few decades, nearly half a billion more people will be exposed," Ryan said. "From here 2080, this number will rise to nearly a billion, in the worst case."
The researchers said the threat to human health would also likely come from new and less-known mosquito-borne diseases.
Prior to the Zika epidemic in the Americas in 2015-2016 – which resulted in more than 600,000 reported cases and nearly 2,000 babies born with congenital malformations – the disease was poorly studied.
Researchers at the University of Florida have decided to include Zika in their modeling, as well as chikungunya, a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes.
"This model advances the field by providing the first mechanistic forecast of the potential future risk of chikungunya and Zika," Maria Diuk-Wasser, an associate professor at Columbia University, told Al Jazeera.
Europe in danger
The researchers described the alarm as a potential risk scale, but the actual effect of mosquito movement only became apparent when it was mapped against human populations.
"We'll see poleward expansions, [into] some of the densest populations in Europe for the first time, resulting in a fairly rapid increase in new exposure risks, "said Ryan.
The team stated that their predictions were useful as a planning tool because they gave policymakers a better sense of the risks they would likely be exposed to and what they should do to monitor and control the spread of disease in the world. coming years.
"This means we can start thinking about how to allocate resources before being surprised by the next outbreak," Ryan said.
Dimension added to climate change
Last week, the United Nations weather agency reported that 62 million people worldwide had been affected by extreme weather in 2018, forcing two million people to settle elsewhere.
UN Chief Antonio Guterres highlighted the rising cost to public health of climate change costs, including heat waves and floods.
Researchers at the University of Florida have expressed the hope that their study would raise awareness of the evolving health threats and the need to act to limit rising temperatures in the world .
"This gives us an idea of the urgency of thinking about mitigation of climate change in the context of global health," Ryan said.
"This shows us that the places we do not currently associate with" tropical diseases "will become risky areas, but that we can still mitigate this risk by taking action to combat climate change."
Too hot
The study revealed with surprise that, with rising temperatures, some areas currently hosting the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) will become too hot for them to thrive.
Although this has a positive effect on human health in these regions – tropical areas of Africa and the Americas, Southeast Asia – scientists have worried about how changes in temperature could affect ecosystems integers.
"The fact that we are beginning to see a lower risk for the tiger mosquito indicates that we are facing a world too hot for mosquitoes to transmit disease, which in itself is an alarming signal," said Ryan.
"I was surprised to see how much this would happen in certain areas," said Diuk-Wasser, adding that the nonlinear effects of climate change on disease risk meant that it " posed a very difficult management problem ",
Ryan said there was still a lot to be done to better understand the impact of rising global temperatures on humans, animals and plants.
"Understanding how they will respond to climate change will enable us to assess our future, plan our management and control, and advocate for climate change mitigation strategies."
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