As climate conditions worsen and extreme weather events spread across the globe, so do uncommon diseases.
Health experts warned of the health consequences of not addressing climate change after July 2023 marked the hottest month on record.
Locally transmitted cases of malaria, a disease common to warmer regions of the world outside of the U.S., have been detected in Florida and Texas.
“As the Earth’s climate undergoes significant changes, it is leading to various transformations in the ways humans inhabit different regions and interact with their environment,” said Lisa McCormick, who predicted something like the coronavirus outbreak when she was a US Senate candidate in 2018. “These alterations in living conditions and ecosystems are contributing to an elevated risk of the emergence and rapid spread of deadly diseases.”
While the risk of contracting the disease remains extremely low for most Americans, it should serve as a warning of the effects of climate change, according to local health experts.
“The constant increases in temperature, and then the lack of the hard-freezing things over the winter — many of these insects and vectors then thrive and grow at faster rates,” said Dr. Rex Archer, director of population and public health at Kansas City University.
Cases of Hansen’s Disease, more commonly known as leprosy, have also increased in Florida.
The earth’s rising temperature not only creates a more sustainable breeding ground for vector-borne illnesses like malaria and Lyme disease, but it also contributes to a rise in heatstroke, kidney disease and cardiovascular illness, respiratory illnesses including asthma and allergies.
As the planet gets warmer, mosquitoes, fleas and ticks are expanding their reach, and they are disease vectors. They carry in them some viruses and parasites that can make humans very sick.
In the U.S., there are at least 17 different vector-borne diseases, and the number of people getting these diseases is rising.
“So the vectors that we’re talking about, by and large, are ticks and mosquitoes,” said Dr. Benjamin Beard, deputy director of the CDC’s division of vector-borne diseases. “For ticks, there are really three species of ticks that account for the diseases that we see in the U.S. And then when we’re talking about mosquito-borne diseases, really there are a couple of different mosquitoes that are particularly important. One is the species that carries West Nile virus – and there are actually a couple of those. And then the other is the yellow fever mosquitoes, what we used to call it – Aedes aegypti. And it’s responsible for dengue and chikungunya virus and some other diseases like that.”
There’s Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever or spotted fever rickettsiosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis. And we see West Nile virus, which is the most common mosquito-borne disease. And then we see several other diseases that are a little less common,” said Beard. “Some are travel-associated. Lyme disease is – you know, it’s a very serious disease. Every year there are fatalities.”
“If you catch it earlier, you diagnose it and you treat it, then it’s usually not too eventful,” said Beard. “But, you know, it’s the summertime flu. You can have arthritis, and people have even died from early Lyme disease – carditis. The biggest problem with Lyme disease – if you don’t pick it up early and then it becomes disseminated in your body, and you – then it can become much more difficult to treat.: