Lyme disease is spreading, government research finds

WFLA.com: Lyme disease is gradually spreading from the Northeast and becoming more common farther south and west, government researchers reported Wednesday. A county-by-county look at the infections shows it’s found in four times as many counties now as it was in 1993, a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

It’s not clear why – experts say climate change, forest regrowth and the spread of deer might all be factors. What is clear is that many more people than before need to watch out for the ticks that carry the infection, CDC says.

“Over time, the number of counties identified as having high incidence of Lyme disease in the northeastern states increased more than 320 percent: from 43 (1993-1997) to 90 (1998-2002) to 130 (2003-2007) to 182 (2008-2012),” Kiersten Kugeler of the CDC’s center in Forth Collins, Colorado, and colleagues write in their report. The northern coast of New Jersey is no longer a hotbed of new Lyme infections, but now east-central Pennsylvania is, they said....

An adult deer tick

Malaria resurfaces in Rio as drought displaces mosquitoes

Adriana Brasileiro in Thomson Reuters Foundation: Malaria has resurfaced in Rio de Janeiro as a historic drought in Brazil's southeastern region is driving mosquitoes in the Atlantic Forest to seek water in areas frequented by people, such as waterfalls.

"The mosquitoes in this area habitually lay their eggs in water collected in bromeliads (plants), deep in the forest," said infectologist Alberto Chebabo. "So the drought probably forced them to look for water in more humid places, such as rivers and waterfalls, where people often go at this time of year," Chebabo, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said in a recent interview. "This may have increased contamination."

Rio de Janeiro and most regions in southeastern Brazil have been considered malaria-free zones for the past 40 years, with just a few cases reported each year. Malaria is only endemic in the northern region, particularly in the Amazon basin.

In the past three weeks, 14 cases have been reported in Rio de Janeiro state, compared with eight in all of 2014, according to the Health Ministry. The people who were infected had travelled to dense Atlantic Forest areas in the interior of Rio state. The cases are not considered severe, as the mosquitoes in the area transmit the Plasmodium vivax parasites, which are less virulent than the Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest species.

Southeast Brazil, home to the country's wealthiest cities, is grappling with the worst drought in at least 80 years as unusually low rainfall since 2013 has resulted in rivers and reservoirs drying up....

The Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon in Rio, shot by chensiyuan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license 

Chikungunya thrives with climate variability in the Caribbean

Jewel Fraser in IPS: ...According to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), as of Feb. 7 this year, there were a total of 4,485 confirmed/probable cases of chikungunya, and just over 87,000 suspected cases in CARPHA’s 24 member states comprising Caribbean nations. Throughout the Americas, with the exception of the U.S., there were more than 800,000 suspected cases. There were 21,000 confirmed or probable cases including figures for the United States.

The illness, which is borne by two types of mosquitoes, is transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito in the Caribbean, said Dr. Dave Chadee, an entomologist and professor of environmental health at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, in Trinidad.

...Prof Chadee told IPS that a mosquito feeding on the blood of an infected person would pick up the virus. The virus would then multiply in the vector’s digestive system before passing through the peritrophic membrane into its circulatory system from where it would migrate to the salivary gland of the mosquito next to the proboscis. From there, the virus would then be transmitted to a human victim when the mosquito takes its next blood meal.

A number of factors have contributed to the rapid transmission of the virus in the Caribbean over the past year, said Chadee, including climate variability. Climate variability has contributed to higher temperatures as well as heavy rains and flooding in some parts of the Caribbean, including, most notably within the past 15 months, the Christmas floods in the Eastern Caribbean in December 2013. Such conditions make the seasonal pattern of the disease an issue in its transmission, Chadee said...

CDC photo of a mosquito

Swiss tourist dies of swine flu in India as toll mounts

Terra Daily via AFP: A Swiss tourist died Thursday of swine flu while visiting India, a local health official said, as the country grapples with an outbreak that has killed more than 400 people since the start of 2015. The 70-year-old woman fell ill while visiting the western state of Rajasthan, a popular tourist destination that has been particularly hard hit by the latest outbreak.

"She died in hospital. She tested positive for the H1N1 virus," the chief medical officer for the Rajasthani city of Jodhpur Y. S. Rathore told AFP, referring to the swine flu virus.

The woman, whose full name has not been given, was visiting the state with a large tour group when she complained of flu-like symptoms and was admitted to a private hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator.

The postmortem report into her death will be completed later Thursday, Jodhpur police commissioner Ashok Rathore told AFP. No one at the Swiss embassy could immediately be reached for comment.

India's health ministry said Wednesday that 407 people had died of swine flu since the start of the year, more than half of them in the first 10 days of this month. More than 5,000 cases of the disease have been detected, the ministry said. The government said it was reviewing procedures to prevent the disease from spreading further, including vaccinating medical staff working with affected patients....

Superbugs could kill 10 million people a year

CBS News: Warnings about the dangers of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are taking on new urgency with the release of a frightening new report from the British government. The report says higher rates of drug-resistant bacterial infections could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. The report puts the financial toll at a potential $100 trillion.

"That's a tremendous impact," CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus told "CBS This Morning." And the problem is not just hypothetical. "It's a real threat today. It's going to be a bigger threat," he said.

Superbugs such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly called MRSA, are currently blamed for about 23,000 deaths a year in the United States. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization warned that antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria have now spread worldwide and could lead to a "post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries...can once again kill." The WHO report called the problem "so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine."

The risk has grown in recent years as the overuse of common antibiotics encouraged growth of drug-resistant strains. "Every time somebody has a fever, a doctor can give them an antibiotic. We have to stop that," Agus said. Antibiotics don't work against viral infections like a cold or the flu, but patients often ask for the drugs anyway, and too often doctors comply...

Colorized transmission electron micrograph showing USA 300 strain of Staphlococcus aureus, shown in gold, outside a white blood cell, shown in blue. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). From the National Institutes of Health

Global animal health threatened by vector born diseases

Companies and Markets: The International Federation for Animal Health has launched a white paper on vector borne diseases and their impact on animal and human health, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The paper, which aims to assist in combating vector borne diseases to promote the better health and welfare of animals for the greater good of protecting animals and humans globally, emphasises the need to understand the diseases and to spread awareness of the most effective ways of managing and preventing them.

Vector borne diseases account for 17% of global infectious diseases with malaria the most deadly, causing an estimated 627,000 deaths annually. VBDs cause high human morbidity levels as well as large economic losses in animal production - trypanosomiasis accounts for losses of $1.2 billion a year in cattle production - and reduced animal welfare. Most statistics regarding the impact of VBDs are hard to track because cases predominantly occur in countries with little means of formal reporting or surveillance, poor diagnostic tools and consequently there is little accurate assessment of the economic impact of these diseases. The IFAH's paper looks to close the gaps in knowledge of VBDs and present solutions for combating the problem.

Global animal health is set to be impacted for years to come as the IFAH reports the difficulties in combating diseases that are constantly changing, affected by climate change which influences vector spread and habitat change by humans introducing wetlands or changing their patters of the transportation of goods, humans, livestock, and companion animals. The most influential and dangerous factor limiting the prevention of vector borne disease is insecticide resistance and farmers must be aware of the need to manage the spread of VBDs through a combination of insecticides and physical barriers....

Edward Hicks' 1848 painting, "The Cornell Farm"

The link between environmental degradation and Ebola

Peter Stoett and Catherine Machalaba in the Toronto Star:  The Ebola epidemic besieging West Africa is perhaps the starkest warning yet that as we tear down forests, we open ourselves up to new strains of virulent disease. Among the key lessons from the current outbreak is that human-created pressures such as intensified food production, rapid trade and travel, and climate change, are putting future generations at risk of further Ebola-like catastrophes.

Through some mix of travel control, medical advances, and humanitarian assistance, we can hopefully stop the current outbreak’s carnage. But what can we do to prevent future outbreaks of so-called exotic diseases?

Delegates at the recent UN conference on biodiversity in South Korea expressed particular concern that the long-term alteration of habitats (by, for example, logging, farming, mining) and speeding climate change will increase the chances of the spread of exotic diseases. They compellingly made the case that Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are all known for their high deforestation rates; and each has been affected by periods of civil strife that exacerbated population displacement and relocation.

It would be premature to conclude that deforestation or other causes of ecosystem change were the factors behind this outbreak, but they remain part of the equation for Ebola, other emerging illnesses and even established diseases like malaria.

Unsustainable policies designed to increase agricultural output for export, illegal logging, the mercurial rise of the palm oil industry and the hunt for oil and gold within tropical and boreal forests — all of these place humans in greater contact with wild species, in some cases for the first time, enabling more efficient transmission of diseases both known and unknown.

Indeed, scientists started linking infectious diseases with environmental alteration decades ago. Today, climate change complicates the issue: most predictions (many of them already realized) suggest the changing climate will allow for the spread of invasive species, degrade ecosystems’ resiliency and ultimately broaden the reach of some diseases....

CDC Disease detective Kari Yacisin (left) conducts contact tracing for Ebola in West Africa with a local health official. CDC photo via Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

India dengue fever cases 300 times higher than officially reported

Jason Burke in the Guardian (UK): The annual number of dengue fever cases in India is nearly 300 times higher than officially reported, according to a study by US and Indian researchers. The report also finds the sometimes-fatal viral disease, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, costs the emerging economic power at least $1.1bn (£700m) each year in medical and other expenses.

“We found that India had nearly 6m annual clinically diagnosed dengue cases between 2006 and 2012 – almost 300 times greater than the number of cases that had been officially reported,” said Prof Donald S Shepard, health economics professor at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, who led the five-year research project.

The scale of the under-reporting surprised researchers and will raise concerns that India’s response to the disease is inadequate, causing unnecessary suffering locally and undermining global attempts to restrict the spread of the virus.

“With most infectious diseases the public healthy community has been succeeding. Ebola is an exception but hopefully a short-term one. My hope for the next decade is that we turn the tide with dengue,” said Shepard, who has been working on dengue since the early 1990s....

The culprit, shot by ProjectManhattan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

Silver lining in Ebola gloom

IRIN: Amid the horror of Ebola in West Africa, where more than 1,400 people have died of the disease, a few have found reason to celebrate after recovering from the virulent infection which has no known cure.

Current Ebola treatment is mainly palliative: easing the headache, fever and muscle pain triggered by the virus, which also causes vomiting and diarrhoea, and in some cases internal and external haemorrhage. It killed up to 90 percent of patients in the early days of the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“We can’t do anything else because there is no treatment for the virus. The only thing we can do is help the body fight the virus and develop immunity,” said Julie Damond, spokeswoman for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in West Africa.

If the symptomatic treatment works, the body rebuilds its defences and health is restored. In the ongoing outbreak in West Africa - the worst known so far - 47 percent of patients have been able to recover, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). MSF says it has seen recovery rates of 25-75 percent in its isolation centres in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The medical aid group reported that since the outbreak started, 95 out of 177 patients confirmed to have been infected with Ebola in its treatment centres in Guinea recovered, and 52 out of 204 survived in Sierra Leone. Liberia is yet to report such figures as the MSF centre there opened just recently...

Ebola virus particles, Thomas W. Geisbert, Boston University School of Medicine - PLoS Pathogens, November 2008 direct link to the image description page doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000225, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license

Ebola management lessons from 14th century Venice

Catherine Paddock in Medical News Today: Lessons from the past can help us deal with today's emerging threats like drug- resistance, infectious disease outbreaks, climate change and even terrorism, say experts who studied the response of Italy's city, Venice, when it was visited by the plague in the 14th century.

The approach the Venetians took is an example of resilience management, write the authors of a study on the subject published in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions. Lead author Igor Linkov, of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center and a visiting professor at the Ca Foscari University in Italy, says: "Resilience management can be a guide to dealing with the current Ebola outbreak in Africa, and others."

Venice was an important maritime power and commercial hub for trade into central Europe, when it was struck by the deadly plague in 1347. At first, the Venetians responded by intensifying prayers and rituals, but when that did not work, their efforts took the form of what experts today call resilience management.

The authorities did not focus on the disease itself, which they did not understand, but on what they could manage: the movements of people, social interactions and surveillance. For example, they instituted a system of inspection, set up quarantine perio
ds with isolation stations on nearby islands, and issued protective clothing.

...Drawing parallels with the current Ebola outbreak, Prof. Linkov points to economic and cultural factors that impede risk management in West Africa. It will take time to overcome the deeply rooted traditions that are helping the spread of the virus and the local people's mistrust in what the authorities are trying to do to contain it.

But there are things that health experts and national leaders can do to bolster other parts of the system to be more resilient to re-emergence of the disease. To apply the principles of resilience management, you have to view the city or community as a complex system so it can prepare, absorb, recover and adapt to unexpected threats, says Prof. Linkov, who adds: "Similar to what the officials of Venice did centuries ago, approaching resilience at the system level provides a way to deal with the unknown and unquantifiable threats we are facing at an increasing frequency."...

Punta della Dogana, in Venice, shot by Ggonnell/Fav, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Ebola called 'out of control' in West Africa

Michael Winter in USA Today: The deadliest-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus has surged in West Africa after slowing briefly, and the pandemic is now "out of control," according to Doctors Without Borders.

Nearly 600 infections and 340 Ebola-related deaths have been recorded in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the most since the virus was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan almost 40 years ago, the World Health Organization said this week. There's no cure or vaccine for the highly contagious disease, which has mortality rate of up to 90%.

"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Bart Janssens, the medical charity's operations director, told the Associated Press on Friday. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."

He criticized the WHO and African governments for not doing more to contain the outbreak and to thoroughly trace everyone who has had contact with the sick or the dead. "There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," he said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."

As of Friday, the WHO was not recommending any travel or trade restrictions to the three countries. "We think that the situation can be controlled with the measures that are being vigorously implemented," Francis Kasolo, the director for disease prevention and control at the WHO's regional office in Republic of Congo, told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle....

Ebola virions, from Charting the Path of the Deadly Ebola Virus in Central Africa. PLoS Biol 3/11/2005: e403 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030403, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license

Sierra Leone Ebola death toll doubles

AllAfrica.com via Voice of America: Sierra Leone health officials have announced the country's death toll from the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has doubled. Sidi Yahya Tunis, director of Information and Communication for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, said an additional six people have died since the first six deaths were reported last week.

Tunis said two of the fatalities were health workers in the country's Kailahun district, near the border with Guinea, where the Ebola virus outbreak was first detected in January.

"As it is right now, we have 12 deaths from 42 confirmed cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone after a test of about 113 cases. That is the status as it is right now. One hundred thirteen people have been tested and, out of that, we have 42 confirmed cases of Ebola and, out of the 42 confirmed, we have 12 deaths," he said.

Tunis said the majority of cases were found in the Kailahun District. "We have now seen cases in the Daru Axis of Kailahun District for the past couple of days. We've had two cases in Kambia also, but those cases are cases that moved from Kailahun District to Kambia. So, they are taken as cases from Kailahun as well. So, all of these new numbers are still from the same Kailahun region of the country," Tunis said....

A CDC image of the Ebola virus

After 8,000 cholera deaths, Haiti faces new epidemic

Terra Daily via AFP: Hard-hit by a cholera epidemic that started in 2010, Haiti now faces a new threat in the expanding chikungunya virus, authorities said Wednesday. "We have had 8,561 deaths from cholera since its reappearance in Haiti in 2010, while 702,892 cases have been confirmed," said Health Minister Florence Duperval.

Now, the chikungunya virus that has been spreading in the Caribbean has emerged as another crisis in the poorest country in the Americas. Transmitted by mosquitoes, the virus causes high fever and severe joint pain, disproportionately striking poorer neighborhoods where homes often have no windows or screens.

"We are putting in place steps to fight the chikungunya outbreak which is being felt almost nationwide," Duperval added. The measures include fumigation and medications, she said.

There had been no cholera in Haiti for at least 150 years until it was allegedly introduced to the Caribbean nation by Nepalese UN peacekeepers sent there in the wake of the disastrous earthquake in January 2010....

Mosquito larvae in stagnant water, shot by Sreejithk2000, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

As dry season ends in Haiti, significant gains seen in fight against cholera, UN official says

UN News Centre: Significant gains in the fight against the cholera epidemic in Haiti have been recorded as the dry season ends and the United Nations continues to support the Government's comprehensive strategy of monitoring, rapid response and planning for long-term solutions, a top UN official in the impoverished country says.

“Since the beginning of the dry season, we have seen registered the lowest number of cases and deaths since the start of the epidemic, with a reduction of 75 per cent of cases in the first trimester of this year against the same period last year,” Peter de Clercq, the Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Haiti, told the UN News Centre.

“That is very good news and reflects our efforts so far are working,” he said. “Of course, every case of cholera is one too many. Every person that dies of cholera is one too many and is unacceptable and will cause us to work even harder to combat the disease,” he added.

Because the disease retracts to limited locations during the dry season, according to the UN Country Team, it presents a window of opportunity for the UN and its partners to target the highest risk areas with surveillance, analysis and rapid response for treatment and sanitation actions; work that continues throughout the year across wider sites of conc
ern.

“Interventions are based on identifying where cholera occurs; then very rapid intervention teams go in and deploy a number of different measures including identifying, isolating and a whole range of water and sanitation-related activities that improve the environment and reduce the risk of the disease spreading,” Mr. de Clercq said....

The UN Mission in Haiti’s Community Violence Reduction section (CVR) continued its joint pilot project with the Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement (DINEPA) to install water filter systems and provide hygiene training in Cité Soleil, Port au Prince. Photo: Logan Abassi/MINUSTAH

Japan culls 112,000 chickens after bird flu outbreak

Seed Daily via AFP: Japan has finished slaughtering 112,000 chickens after confirming its first bird flu infections for three years, with authorities stepping up efforts to swiftly contain the latest outbreak, officials said Tuesday.

Workers on Sunday started culling 56,000 chickens kept at a poultry farm in Kumamoto, southwestern Japan, where DNA tests confirmed the H5 strain of the virus after owners reported sudden deaths in the flock on Saturday, a Kumamoto prefectural government official said.

Another 56,000 birds were slaughtered at a separate farm run by the same owner after it was identified as a location of possible infections, the official said. "We finished the slaughtering operation late Monday and are now preventing the virus from spreading to other areas," the official said, adding that no further infections had been reported by Tuesday morning.

It was the first confirmed outbreak of bird flu in Japan in three years. Scientists say there have been no cases of the disease being contracted by people who have eaten poultry or eggs....

Ebola outbreak death toll in West Africa rises to 135

Voice of America News: The World Health Organization says the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to at least 135. In a Thursday statement the WHO says Guinea's health ministry had reported a total of 122 deaths, while 13 deaths had been reported by Liberian health officials.

The WHO says officials are investigating more than 200 suspected or confirmed cases of the virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Six suspected cases in Mali tested negative and no new suspected cases have been reported.

This is the first major outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. Authorities say it began in a forested southeastern region of Guinea in February.

The Ebola virus is spread by contact with bodily fluids. It causes symptoms that include vomiting, unstoppable bleeding and organ failure....

A CDC image of the Ebola virus

Climate change adaptation tool helps predict disease risk

The Poultry Site: A tool to calculate the risk of food and waterborne diseases under current or future climate change conditions has been established following a recent EU funded study. Free to use, the online tool can help guide climate change adaptation, such as improvements to water management, by estimating the likelihood of contracting four diseases under a range of environmental conditions.

It is known that climate affects health, for example, excess rainfall can cause sewage overflow, leading to outbreaks of waterborne disease, and higher temperatures can influence disease incidence by either encouraging or restricting pathogen reproduction, depending on the species.

Concerns have therefore been raised about the impacts of climate change on public health. In response to a World Health Organization call for new decision-support tools to assess climate change’s potential health impacts, the authors of this EU-funded study,A Decision Support Tool to Compare Waterborne and Foodborne Infection and/or Illness Risks Associated with Climate Change, J Schijven, M Bouwknegt, A M de Roda Husman et al developed a software package to assess the risk from climate change (CC-QMRA: Climate Change Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment).

This study was funded by the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), an agency of the EU. It estimates the risk of infection by norovirus, Cryptosporidium, and Campylobacter and non-cholera Vibrio species, which can all cause gastroenteritis....

Feeding chickens in Hungary, shot by Civertan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Health at the heart of climate change agenda

The Hindu: Climate change may trigger the emergence of new and unfamiliar infections and pose new challenges for disease control in Kerala. According to the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) prepared by the Department of Environment and Climate Change, the health sector will have to contend with the outbreak of vector and water borne diseases, new breeding sites of vectors, pathogens and bacteria, occurrence of new and emerging diseases, and increase in mortality due to extreme events caused by climate change.

There is a need for Kerala to put health at the heart of the climate change agenda, the action plan states. Observing that the emergence of dengue fever, chikungunya, and other viral diseases are highly sensitive to climate conditions, the document notes that combating these diseases will extract a toll on public health and the economy.

The report warns that climate change can also result in diseases such as Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis as well as salmonella and other food borne infections caused, transmitted or harboured by insects, snails and other cold-bloode
d creatures. “When infectious diseases appear in new locations where people lack immunity and health services do not have experience in control or treatment, the effects can be dramatic.”

The report says that people living in coastal regions, waterlogged areas, cities, and hilly areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change....

The chikungunya virus, image by A2-33, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Swedish researchers map the risks of new virus epidemic in Europe

A press release from the University of Umea (Sweden): The risk of dengue fever beginning to spread in Europe is imminent. According to researchers from Umeå University, this is no longer just an issue for the scientific community but also for politicians and policy makers, who need to be prepared and develop preventive measures.

With a changing climate and rising temperatures in Europe, the incidence of the Aedes aegypti mosquito has also increased. The mosquito is the main vector of dengue that can cause haemorrhagic fever. Although no outbreak of the disease has not yet occurred in Europe, researchers at the Epidemiology and Global Health unit at Umeå University claim that there is now good living conditions for the mosquito in Europe and that it is therefore only a matter of time before we see an epidemic here. The Aedes albopictus mosquito has already established itself in large parts of Europe. Even though it is not as competent a vector as Aedes aegypti, several domestic cases of the disease have been observed in countries such as France and Croatia.

“The last outbreak of dengue in Portuguese Madeira when several thousand became ill, shows that it is no longer a theoretical possibility that the disease can take hold in Europe. It is a reality that can strike at any time,” says Raman Preet, researcher and scientific project manager of the Dengue Tools project at the Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå University.  “When the disease shows up in Europe it has probably accompanied travellers in areas in the world where the disease is established. Then it will be spread with the help of the Aedes mosquito”.

The risk for Swedish travellers to be infected by dengue is highest when going to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, while most cases in Sweden stems from trips to Thailand....

Turner's "Fifth Plague of Egypt"

World Heath Day: UN urges countries to prioritize combat against vector-borne diseases

UN News Centre: Warning that a “small bite can carry a big threat,” the United Nations family is marking World Health Day by urging the international community to back a global health agenda that gives higher priority to controlling the spread of vector-borne diseases, a step towards ensuring that no one in the 21st century would die from the bite of a mosquito or a tick.

“Every year, more than 1 million people die from diseases carried by mosquitoes, flies and other insects, such as triatomine bugs. These vector-borne diseases – which include malaria, dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis – cause chronic illness and immense suffering for hundreds of millions more,” says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message for the Day, which is observed every year on 7 April to mark the founding in 1948 of the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

Mr. Ban says that climate change, altered habitats and increased international trade and travel are exposing more people to the vectors that transmit these diseases. They present a risk in all regions, including countries where the threat had formerly been eradicated, but the most affected are the world’s poorest people,
especially those who live in remote rural communities far from health services or in urban shanty towns.

“By profoundly affecting people’s health, vector-borne diseases are a serious impediment to poverty reduction and sustainable development,” he said, stressing that work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and define a post-2015 development agenda must recognize that investing in vector control and disease prevention is both wise and necessary....

Skeeter shot by Alvesgaspar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license