SPAIN: October 9, 2008
BARCELONA, Spain - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to
yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the
Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.
The society, based in the Bronx Zoo in the United States and which works in
60 nations, urged better monitoring of wildlife health to help give an early
warning of how pathogens might spread with global warming.
It listed the "deadly dozen" as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera,
ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift
Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever.
"Even minor disturbances can have far reaching consequences on what diseases
(wild animals) might encounter and transmit as climate changes," said Steven
Sanderson, head of the society.
"The term 'climate change' conjures images of melting ice caps and rising
sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important
is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will
change the distribution of dangerous pathogens," he said.
"Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots
will occur and plan how to prepare," he said in a statement.
The UN Climate Panel says that greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from human
use of fossil fuels, are raising temperatures and will disrupt rainfall
patterns and have impacts ranging from heatwaves to melting glaciers.
"For thousands of years people have known of a relationship between health
and climate," William Karesh of the society told a news conference in
Barcelona to launch the report at an International Union for Conservation of
Nature congress.
Among phrases, people said they were "under the weather" when ill, he noted.
He said that the report was not an exhaustive list but an illustration of
the range of infectious diseases that may threaten humans and animals.
-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
