Satellite and other new technologies could be deployed to help predict disease outbreaks and give us more time to devise strategies to counteract them, suggests the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which cites examples of how weather information can be used in the battle against deadly pathogens.

In Botswana, it says, an early warning system based on rainfall data forecasts malaria incidence up to four months ahead - malaria outbreaks are associated with inter-annual and seasonal variations. In Singapore a weather-based model for dengue can predict epidemics 13 months ahead of the peak, giving the authorities time to increase control measures

The IPCC report focuses on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

NASA scientists say it is possible to predict outbreaks of diseases like Ebola. They have found that outbreaks of the disease coincide with a particularly dry period followed by a sudden very wet season. Satellite data for the Ebola-triggering pattern could serve as an early warning for future outbreaks, they say.
The NASA research is not in the IPCC report, and there is no observational evidence that suggests climate change is increasing the risk of Ebola outbreaks, said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, one of the lead authors of the chapter on human health in the IPCC report. But there is a case for "newer approaches such as the use of satellite imagery to give us longer lead times of conditions suitable for transmission. Then we could decrease a lot of health risks from climate change".
Campbell-Lendrum, who is also the climate change and health team leader within the public health and environment department at the World Health Organization (WHO), welcomes the IPCC's spotlight on human health in its new report.

The obvious direct health risks associated with climate variability, such as the higher incidence of dengue, malaria, cholera and diarrhoea are well-established. But now governments also have to think outside the box, say the scientists because any impact on human health has far-reaching implications.
 

Source: Irin News