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Researchers Use Climate Forecasts to Battle Disease

Posted on: Thursday, 19 June 2008, 00:05 CDT

Severe flooding devastates Iowa, raising public health concerns. A typhoon levels the coast of Myanmar, triggering an epidemic of cholera, dengue fever, and malaria. As climate change brings new threats to human existence, scientists plan to better calculate disease outbreaks as they forecast weather.

“Everything is connected in our earth system,: said the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Conrad C. Lautenbacher. The goal is to bring all forms of data like weather, human behavior, disasters, and health together. “It’s science without borders.” Lautenbacher said.

In the spring of 2004, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt and a number of U.S. Cabinet members held a summit in Japan with environmental ministers from more than 50 nations. During the summit they adopted a ten-year implementation plan for a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). According to Lautenbacher, 73 countries, and more than 50 international groups are currently contributing information to the GEOSS.

“We can’t afford to be wrong.,” said Lautenbacher. When it comes to disasters, and health “we have to get ahead of it.”

According to Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, scientists are becoming “pretty good” at using data to model some weather events. The goal is for scientists to be able to “actively and aggressively do something to mitigate the effects.”

Research has shown that the temperature of the Bay of Bengal has had affects on the outbreak of cholera in India. Scientists are now conducting forecasts on the El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that affects water temperatures in the Bay of Bengal. Researchers hope to use the data to forecast future cholera outbreaks.

Secretary-general of the World Federation of Public Health, Barbara Hatcher, compared the study to the work of Dr. John Snow, a physician who used a map of cholera victims’ homes, and water sources to pinpoint a source of cholera in 19th century London.

Lautenbacher noted that weather is not the only type of data added into the equation. Information on transportation, epidemiology, migration, population changes, and social behaviors must also be factored.

Recently Robert W. Corell of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment investigated a case of anaphylactic shock in Alaska. Corell found the source to be the sting from a bee that hibernates in moist soil. The species was not native to Alaska, but had migrated north when the Alaskan climate became milder. 

In another instance, Corell traced the diarrhea-causing giardia outbreak in northern parts of Norway to a species of beavers who had moved into the region because of the moderating climate.

Researchers like Dr. Bryan McNally of the Emory University School of Medicine, hope that the climate forecasts will allow hospitals to prepare for floods, hurricanes, and other disasters. Warnings could even include the spread of toxic substances and diseases. Predicting the arrival of natural disasters would also aid in a planned evacuation for people in harm’s way.

Land use patterns, agriculture, urbanization, economic infrastructure and wastewater treatment facilities are all factors that should be evaluated.

"It's important ... that we build climate into these other types of long-term analyses rather than trying to separate it out," he said.

According to McNally, the most vulnerable populations: the poor, children, the elderly, and those in countries with weak infrastructure, and poor health-delivery systems would see the most benefit from climate forecasting.

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On the Net:

http://www.epa.gov/geoss/basic.html

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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