cooler regions becoming more hospitable for mosquitoes

Es­ti­mated reading time is 1 minute.

WHEN MOS­QUITO SEASON brought past dengue out­breaks to re­gions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Hi­malayan country was typ­i­cally too chilly for the disease-carrying in­sects to live. But with cli­mate change opening new paths for the viral dis­ease, Nepal is now reeling from an un­prece­dented out­break. At least 9,000 people have been di­ag­nosed with dengue since August.

Dengue is car­ried by mos­qui­toes and has long been as­so­ci­ated with warmer, low-lying trop­ical cli­mates where the in­sects thrive. But for years, re­searchers have warned that dengue and other mosquito-borne ill­nesses would spread into new re­gions, as cli­mate change brings warmer tem­per­a­tures and al­ters rain­fall pat­terns so that cooler re­gions be­come more hos­pitable for mosquitoes.

“We have never had an out­break like this be­fore,” says Dr. Basu Dev Pandey, di­rector of the Sukraraj Trop­ical and In­fec­tious Dis­eases Hos­pital. “People are afraid.”

The para­graphs above were taken from “Nepal is reeling from an un­prece­dented dengue out­break” Gloria Dickie in Sci­ence News (Oc­tober 7, 2019).

To read more, click HERE.

Re­searchers have warned that mosquito-borne ill­nesses would spread into new re­gions, as cli­mate change brings warmer tem­per­a­tures and al­ters rain­fall pat­terns. Click To Tweet

GCC cartoon Texas DaveChapette 900

Car­toon by Patrick Chap­patte for the New York Times.

 

Leave a Comment