A new World Health Organization, WHO, review raises concerns about the impact of climate change on Neglected Tropical Diseases, NTDs, and malaria. Analyzing over 42,000 studies, the review highlights a critical gap in understanding how rising temperatures and weather pattern shifts will affect these diseases.
The worry is that changing climate could expand the reach of disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes, potentially introducing or reintroducing NTDs and malaria to new regions. This would disproportionately burden communities already struggling with these illnesses.
The findings highlight the urgent need for further research to predict and prepare for the evolving threat of climate-impacted diseases.
To understand how climate change might affect malaria and NTDs, researchers conducted a massive review of scientific literature published between 2010 and 2023. They analyzed over 42,000 studies, focusing on 1,543 in detail.
From the findings, the number of studies correlated with a country's disease burden, healthcare quality, and vulnerability to climate change. While malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and leishmaniasis received significant attention, other NTDs were understudied. This highlights a critical gap in knowledge and the need for broader research to understand the full impact of climate change on various NTDs.
Director of WHO's Global NTD Programme, Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall, who led the study said: "The findings presented in this major review highlight the need for more comprehensive, collaborative, and standardized modelling, so that we can better understand and predict the effects of climate change on malaria and NTDs, both directly and indirectly.
"This important and timely review reveals alarming trends and is a call to urgent action. Malaria transmission is likely to shift both polewards and to higher altitudes, while the mosquito vector responsible for transmission of dengue and chikungunya is predicted to continue to expand its range. If we are to protect and build upon the hard-won victories of the past two decades, the time to mobilize is now."
Despite this, the paper highlights that published research has too often focused on low-disease burden countries with High Access to Quality Healthcare (using HAQI measurement). Given that the effects of climate change on malaria and NTDs will vary significantly by disease and location, exhibiting non-linear patterns and evolving over time, this focus presents what the Task Team calls a growing emergency for the communities that have been historically underserved in relation to these long-overlooked diseases.
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On his part, Chief Strategy Officer of Reaching the Last Mile, Tala Al-Ramahi, said, "The climate crisis has the potential to reverse decades of progress in global health and development. Greater investment in research is urgently needed to support the development of timely and evidence-based interventions, and to allow us to anticipate and mitigate the worst consequences of climate change on human health."
With just 34 percent of studies reviewed (174 studies) addressing mitigation strategies and 5 percent (24 studies) looking at adaptation methods, this review further highlights the lack of evidence required to protect the gains made against malaria and NTDs in recent decades. Our collective progress could unravel at the hands of a climate in crisis.
In the view of the Director of the WHO's Global Malaria Programme, Dr Daniel Ngamije Madandi, "We have recently seen the consequences of extreme weather events on malaria, and they are only predicted to become more commonplace. The paper provides a clarion call for mitigation and evidence-responsive adaptation to climate change. As the impact of climate change is likely to be disproportionately borne by the poorest people, who are also disproportionately affected by malaria and NTDs, a more equitable, comprehensive, and sustainable response is needed."
