Climate change and the resurgence of malaria in the East African highlands

The public health and economic consequences of Plasmodium falciparum malaria are once again regarded as priorities for global development. There has been much speculation on whether anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating the malaria problem, especially in areas of high altitude where P. falcip...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2002-02, Vol.415 (6874), p.905-909
Main Authors: Hay, Simon I, Cox, Jonathan, Rogers, David J, Randolph, Sarah E, Stern, David I, Shanks, G. Dennis, Myers, Monica F, Snow, Robert W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa, Eastern - epidemiology
Altitude
Animals
Anthropogenic factors
Biological and medical sciences
Brackish
Climate
Climate change
Culicidae
disease transmission
Economics
Freshwater
Greenhouse Effect
Human protozoal diseases
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Incidence
Infectious diseases
letter
Low temperature
Malaria
Malaria, Falciparum - epidemiology
Malaria, Falciparum - transmission
Medical sciences
multidisciplinary
Parasitic diseases
Plasmodium falciparum
Protozoal diseases
Public health
Regions
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Vapor pressure
Vector-borne diseases
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The public health and economic consequences of Plasmodium falciparum malaria are once again regarded as priorities for global development. There has been much speculation on whether anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating the malaria problem, especially in areas of high altitude where P. falciparum transmission is limited by low temperature. The International Panel on Climate Change has concluded that there is likely to be a net extension in the distribution of malaria and an increase in incidence within this range. We investigated long-term meteorological trends in four high-altitude sites in East Africa, where increases in malaria have been reported in the past two decades. Here we show that temperature, rainfall, vapour pressure and the number of months suitable for P. falciparum transmission have not changed significantly during the past century or during the period of reported malaria resurgence. A high degree of temporal and spatial variation in the climate of East Africa suggests further that claimed associations between local malaria resurgences and regional changes in climate are overly simplistic.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/415905a