Global Warming spreads tropical disease

Chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever, is not something you would expect to contract it Italy, but a recent outbreak in Castiglione di Cervia is the first indication that a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics is spreading because of global warming and globalization. According to a NY Times article today, Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program, “This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country...Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”

Better cracking on those transgenic mosquitoes we had blogged about earlier.