I went to an interesting talk last night by Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Foreign Policy Association initiated a new series with his talk: the Dame Jillian Sackler Distinguished Lecture. (She was married to Arthur Sackler, the research psychiatrist and art patron.)
Dr. Fauci’s talk was on Infectious Diseases and Global Health: Challenges and Priorities. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s a superstar in the medical research firmament, probably best known for his robust and effective support of research on HIV/AIDS and for promoting public health measures for its prevention and medicines for its treatment. He has covered a tremendous amount of other ground as well.
His presentation reminded us of the profound impact that infectious diseases have had on human history. The mid-14th Century “Black Death” that decimated Europe was a turning point in human history. (I was reminded of a great book, A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman.) The Spanish Influenza in 1918 killed over 50 million worldwide. In recent years, we have seen how the increasingly globalized world has exacerbated the spread of infectious diseases. HIV/AIDS, SARS and West Nile Virus are three salient examples.
There are the old diseases, like malaria, dengue fever, and tuberculosis, that have been around for many centuries. But there were also 335 new diseases recorded between 1940 and 2004. There is, perhaps not surprisingly, a stark disparity in the susceptibility to infectious diseases between the developed and developing worlds. High-income countries account for only 6% of the deaths.
Fauci numbered several factors that contribute to the persistence and the re-emergence of old diseases, as well as the rise of new diseases, including the ecology and environment. When asked during the Q&A about the influence of climate change, he pointed out that, for instance, the range of malaria-bearing insects has increased in Kenya as a consequence of warming at higher elevations that had previously been inimical environments for them.
I wrote about the spread in range and increase in prevalence of some diseases at this post, Vectors, Lepidoptera and Invasives. For dengue fever, researchers are deeply concerned that climate change is driving its increase. A pretty fair-sized conference took place last March here in NYC – “Emerging Infectious Diseases in Response to Climate Change.” This note from Scientific American highlights the conference and some of its concerns. It says that for one prominent disease ecologist at least, “…the question of whether climate change will expand the prevalence of infectious diseases ‘is an unequivocal yes. Climate has a strong impact on the incidence of disease.'”
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine from around the same time of the conference, Global Climate Change and Infectious Diseases, cites findings from the World Health Organization to the effect that global temperatures increases of 2 to 3°C – inevitable, as we know – will increase the population at risk for malaria by 3 to 5%. In other words, millions more would likely get malaria each year. Beyond just infectious diseases, WHO is looking into and addressing many of the dire health impacts associated with climate change.
If you hadn’t gotten the picture by now, folks, it’s not just the polar bears.
