Climate change is making more than half of human pathogenic diseases even worse, according to a study published in the journal Nature. More than 200 known infectious diseases have been at some point aggravated by climate-related events like heat waves, rising sea levels, and wildfires. Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventative medicine at the department of health policy and professor of medicine for the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, joined Cheddar News to break the study down.

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Study Shows Infectious Diseases Might Be Worsening Due to Climate Change

climate change is making more than half of human pathogenic diseases even worse. According to a study published in the journal Nature. Climate change, more than 200 known infectious diseases have been at some point aggravated by climate related events like heat waves, rising sea levels and wildfires joining us now to discuss this Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventative medicine at the Department of Health policy and professor of medicine for the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and of course, friend of the show dr Schaffner, welcome back. Can you break the study down for us? How is climate change making illnesses in people worse? Well, Hannah, it's really very impressive around the world, even though the temperature of the water and the air is increasing, the layman thinks just a little it has had profound effects on climate and as a consequence there's also an effect on infectious diseases. For example, malaria, malaria exists in the tropics. But as you go up on mountains it suddenly stops at about 5000 ft because the mosquitoes that transmit the malaria can't go any higher except they're now going higher because it's warmer up above. And so the range of malaria in some tropical countries has increased rather than decreased. Uh There's some other examples in Italy, there's a virus that's transmitted uh sometimes by mosquitoes and it has moved up the Italian peninsula. This is a fancy virus called chikungunya into areas of Northern Italy where it was never seen before. So there are lots of examples of how the climate change, although subtle has evoked major changes in the ecology, which permits certain infectious diseases actually to expand long connected the weather to diseases in people. But what makes this study different dr Schaffner? Well, this study was a very comprehensive, comprehensive review of a whole large number of studies done around the world that have tried to associate climate change with changes in infectious diseases. And the authors have have kind of wrapped these all together into the theme that the climate change is having effects around the globe, which are reflected in increases in infectious diseases over much of the world's population. What's interesting here is the study shows how climate change can affect people, even if they don't know it with more studies like this. Do you think it will shine a light on how people view climate change and inspire some much needed action and a climate change is real. People have to try to understand its effects sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic with much more rain, flooding and and the like. But it's real. We have to think globally as the environmentalists tell us, but act locally, do something in your own home, in your own circumstances to reduce your what what do we call it? The carbon footprint and pay attention to those elections? We want to vote for people who understand climate change and will help us all as a society preserve this earth for our Children and our grandchildren. Is there anything we can do here doctor any solutions? Well, there's no single thing that we can do. But we can all do many things together to work together to reduce climate change. And of course Removing ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels is at the heart of that because burning fossil fuels changes our atmosphere and that has been the major impact in increasing the average temperature around the world. So if the world did a better job about decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, is it possible some diseases, even some health disasters like COVID-19 wouldn't have happened? Well, I don't think it would have had a dramatic effect on COVID-19. But certainly the creeping expansion of certain infectious diseases around the world because insects such as mosquitoes now have a broader range so that they can transmit more of these infections that can be curtailed and brought back and just very quickly dr we're still in the thick of the pandemic. There's monkey pox. Even concerns about the emergence of polio. How worried should we be of these diseases circulating? Well, we have to learn that we do live in a global community. Uh, no fence can keep out the transmission of these viruses. The viruses don't need a passport. They will infect us, will get on planes and will be transmitted around the world. Look at how quickly a virus known to exist in central and west africa has spread to europe Canada and the United States. Of course, I'm talking about monkey pox Covid, which began in an internal city in china within a month, had spread to all the continents of the world except Antarctica, carried by people who got on planes. We travel so much, we're in a global community. We have to think globally. Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventative medicine at the Department of Health policy and professor of medicine for the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Thank you as always, sir.