Study links climate change to over 50% of infectious diseases

A new study, published on Monday in Nature Climate Change, found that 58% of infectious diseases are linked to climate threats.

According to the study’s authors, 218 diseases (or 58% of 375 human infectious diseases) appear to be aggravated by one of ten problems associated with climate change.

Climate threats such as floods, heat waves, and drought have aggravated more than half of the hundreds of infectious diseases that affect humans, including malaria, cholera, hantavirus, and even anthrax, the same source added.

The study mapped 1,006 pathways, from climate hazards to sick humans. In some cases, heavy rains and flooding allow mosquitoes or rats to infect humans. Warmer oceans and heat waves can contaminate food, just as heat waves can also bring virus-carrying bats.

In addition to looking at infectious diseases, the researchers looked at non-infectious problems such as allergies, asthma and even animal bites to see how many could be associated with climate hazards.

As a result, they identified 286 health problems, 223 of which were worsened by climate hazards, another 9 were diminished and 54 were both diminished and worsened, according to the study.

“The findings of this study are frightening and illustrate the enormous consequences of climate change on human pathogens,” reacted, in this sense, Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University.