Kampala — INDOOR spraying of DDT starts in Oyam district on Friday, the Director General of Health Services, Dr. Sam Zaramba, has said. Fifteen other endemic districts will also be sprayed, he said, adding that ICON, another pesticide which has been used to spray mosquitoes, will be phased out.

The spraying comes shortly after the World Health Organisation warned of an increase in malaria and the Rift Valley fever due to increasing temperatures because of global warming.

Malaria accounts for 40% of outpatients and 20% of n-patients in hospitals in Uganda. The mosquito-bite spread disease killed about 110,000 people annually a few years ago, according to the Commissioner of Health Services, Dr. Sam Okware.

In a statement, WHO director-general Margaret Chan said warmer temperatures in the past 30 years had created more favourable conditions for the multiplication of mosquitoes.

The rains, which are expected to become more frequent as the climate changes, she said, would also see an escalation of the Rift Valley fever.

"In addition to these, climate-sensitive impacts on human health are occurring today. They are attacking the pillars of public health providing a glimpse of the challenges public health will have to confront on a large scale," Chan said.

The warming of the planet will be gradual, but the effects of extreme weather events like more storms, floods, droughts and heat waves will be abrupt and acutely felt, she said.

Climate changes, she noted, affect the "most fundamental determinants of health like air, water, food, shelter and freedom from disease."

Already, she argued, human beings were exposed to the effects of climate-sensitive diseases which are killing millions. She cited malnutrition which kills more than 3.5 million people per year, diarrhoeal diseases, which claim over 1.8 million and malaria, which kills almost one million.

Chan said there was need for work plans and research, better surveillance and forecasting and stronger basic health services. WHO, she explained, was supporting research on how best to protect people from climate change, particularly the vulnerable populations like women and children.