An important part, up to 58%, of all known infectious diseases may become more dangerous to humans due to global warming. This is what emerged from an American study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, which showed how Of the 375 infectious diseases, 218 were exacerbated by climatic hazardsIn particular, 160 have been exacerbated by global warming alone, 81 by drought and 21 by fire as well.
The impact of diseases such as Lyme, Dengue, and even malaria has been analyzed by measuring climate risks due to the emission of greenhouse gases, which cause droughts, fires, floods, heat waves or storms. The researchers concluded that there is a link between environmental change and exacerbation of infectious diseases and that these weather events tend to amplify the impact of these diseases.
On the one hand, with global warming, these diseases are transmitted by multiple vectors – the study authors explained – on the other hand, there is a great diversity of types of pathogens that now affect humans (viruses, bacteria, fungi, animals, etc.). The authors thus identified more than 1,000 transmission routes, “such as mosquitoes, ticks or fleas,” notes Yannick Simonin, a virologist at Inserm, in an interview with Le Monde. As the temperature rises, some diseases can also be transmitted through the water, such as gastroenteritis or some meningoencephalitis.
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