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Climate forecasts to warn spread of illness

WASHINGTON: A cyclone wrecks coastal Myanmar, spawning outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Flooding inundates the state of Iowa, raising an array of public health concerns.

As these disasters draw attention to weather hazards, which many fear could be exacerbated by climate change, scientists are working to be able to better predict health dangers as they forecast the weather.

“Everything is connected in our earth system,” said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at a panel on “Changing Climate: Changing Health Patterns.”

The key is bringing all types of data together — health, weather, human behaviour, disasters and others — “it’s science without borders,” said Mr. Lautenbacher.

He said 73 countries and more than 50 international organisations are participating in the Global Earth Observation System of Systems and more are expected to join.

It is a major effort to observe what’s going on on the Earth, he said. When it comes to health and disasters “we can’t afford to be wrong a lot of the time. We have got to get ahead of it.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, noted that “we have these very modern technologies that are very good at sensing atmosphere and earth surfaces, and you can put them in computers and model some of these weather events ... and we’re pretty good at it right now.

“But imagine for a moment, that not only that we measure that stuff, that we then actively and aggressively do something about it to mitigate the effects to people, to the environment, to planets, to plants.”

Take a disease like cholera, said Mr. Lautenbacher, noting that research has shown that outbreaks in India vary with the temperature of the Bay of Bengal. Satellites cam measure that temperature.

In addition, climate researchers are now doing forecasts of the Pacific Ocean phenomenon known as El Nino, which affects temperatures in the bay, so that might also be used to forecast cholera.

Barbara Hatcher, secretary-general of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, likened the research to the work of Dr. John Snow, the 19th century English physician who first tracked down a source of cholera in London, using a map of victims’ homes and where they got their water.

Mr. Lautenbacher noted that changes in vegetation and moisture can help forecast outbreaks of malaria, showing a vegetation map of Africa based on satellite data.

But it is not just weather data that must be worked into the system, he added, researchers must also use information on population changes, transportation, migration, epidemiology and social and behavioural factors.

Robert W. Corell of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment said he had been asked to investigate an outbreak of anaphylactic shock in Alaska.

He traced it to stings from a type of bee that hibernates in wet soil, which had never lived there before but had moved north as the climate became milder and wetter.

In another case, he said, diarrhoea-causing giardia has appeared in parts or northern Norway, where moderating climate has allowed beavers — which can spread the germ — to move into territory once exclusive to reindeer.

Dr. Bryan McNally of Emory University School of Medicine, suggested requiring hospitals, as part of being accredited, to set up plans to work with local weather and warning forecasters.

Traditionally hospitals have sought to ride out storms, but that did not work out well when hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans. — AP

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