Tropical Diseases Move Up North

Climate change and rising temperatures are driving tropical diseases up north, to countries like Canada, US and Netherlands, says this here. Mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range into regions where diseases like Malaria, Cholera, West Nile virus were hitherto unknown. "Things we projected to happen in 2080 are happening in 2006", says a Harvard physician. Higher altitude regions are warming faster than lowlands. Trees are moving upwards with melting snowcaps, bringing disease carrying insects to higher elevations. Warming of seas is helping breed cholera virus in regions where cholera was unheard of. In South America, first case of cholera was detected in 1991, and since then has spread across the continent killing more than 10,000 people. West Nile virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, was first detected in New York in 1999. It has infected 21,000 people in US and Canada since then and killed around 800. It is a virus which thrives in drought and an increase in it's cases has been observed directly coinciding with unusually dry, hot season, which is typical of drought-deluge spells caused by climate change all over the world.

Climate change has impacts we can never, never be able to understand fully. They say we still have a ten year window. If each country, especially the developed and the fast developing, focuses on working on a war footing to bring down emissions in the next ten to fifteen years, we might still be able to avert the complete break down of natural systems of this blue planet we call our home.