- Title: Climate change hampers progress on fighting epidemics: Global Fund
- Date: 22nd October 2019
- Summary: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (OCTOBER 22, 2019) (REUTERS) NEWS CONFERENCE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (English) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE GLOBAL FUND, PETER SANDS, SAYING: "Significant parts of particularly eastern Africa are protected from malaria by altitude. So, if you go to Kenya or Ethiopia there are parts of Kenya and Ethiopia where it is too cold for mosquitos, because it is too high. And what we are seeing is that mosquitos that carry malaria are becoming present in some of the places where they were not present before, because the coldest points have become less cold in these high-altitude areas and obviously that's a very worrying development."
- Embargoed: 5th November 2019 12:32
- Keywords: malaria storms eradication of disease deadly epidemics Mozambique Ethiopia Global Fund floods rising temperatures mosquitoes Climate change Kenya
- Location: GUIDAN ROUMDJI, MARADI, NIGER / NAIROBI & HOMA BAY, KENYA / MOUNT KILIMANJARO, TANZANIA / PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
- City: GUIDAN ROUMDJI, MARADI, NIGER / NAIROBI & HOMA BAY, KENYA / MOUNT KILIMANJARO, TANZANIA / PEMBA, MOZAMBIQUE / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
- Country: Switzerland
- Topics: Health/Medicine
- Reuters ID: LVA002B26JI2V
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Climate change is making it harder to eradicate deadly epidemics, with rising temperatures helping mosquitoes spread malaria in higher places in Africa, the head of a global health fund said on Tuesday (October 22).
Other potential deadly consequences of climate change include more intense cyclones which leave an increased risk of infections in their wake, said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
He described new, higher-altitude infections in Kenya and Ethiopia in East Africa as "very worrying."
The Global Fund, an alliance of governments, civil society and private sector partners, is pursuing a United Nations target of ending the three epidemics by 2030.
Warmer ocean surface waters are increasing the intensity and frequency of storms. The Fund had sent emergency resources after flooding caused by Cyclone Idai resulted in thousands of new malaria cases in Mozambique this year.
At a conference hosted in October by French President Emmanuel Macron, the Global Fund secured record funding pledges of just over $14 billion for three years.
Sands, former chief executive officer of Standard Chartered bank, said the world's ability to hit the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the U.N. on the three diseases would partly depend on whether countries implement increases in healthcare spending of $46 billion over the same period.
African countries in particular are being urged to increase spending to 15 percent of their budgets on healthcare -- a big jump for many.
Of the three epidemics, progress on TB has been the slowest, although there has been recent progress in identifying a greater portion of the millions of undiagnosed cases, he said.
Malaria infected 219 million people worldwide in 2017, killing 435,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Most of the victims were babies or young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2017, TB killed 1.6 million people, including 300,000 people with HIV, the WHO said, making it one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.
(Production: Cecile Mantovani and Pascale Antonie) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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