Disease

‘Local air pollution around the world kills about 6.5 million people annually.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Doctors have revealed that millions are already suffering the effects, in the spread of infectious diseases, uneven crop yields and longer allergy seasons

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The Lancet - Health and climate change - The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health

theguardian.com - by Christiana Figueres - October 31, 2017

A report just published in the Lancet from the specially created Lancet Countdown initiative, reveals just how bad climate change is for public health. The diagnosis reveals that hundreds of millions of people are already suffering the health impacts of climate change. Its insidious creep is being felt in multiple ways: rising temperatures are hastening the spread of infectious diseases; crop yields are becoming uneven and unpredictable, worsening the hunger and malnourishment for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet; allergy seasons are getting longer; and at times it is simply too hot for farmers to work in the fields.

Image: White-footed mice are efficient transmitters of Lyme disease in the Northeast. They infect up to 95 percent of the ticks that feed on them. But it's people who create the conditions for Lyme outbreaks by building homes in the animals' habitat. Stephen Reiss/for NPR

npr.org - March 6th 2017 - Michaeleen Doucleff, Jane Greenhalgh

Last summer Felicia Keesing returned from a long trip and found that her home in upstate New York had been subjected to an invasion.

"There was evidence of mice everywhere. They had completely taken over," says Keesing, an ecologist at Bard College.

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Dr. Mary T. Bassett, center, the New York City health commissioner, at a July news conference about Zika with Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy commissioner commissioner for disease control, and Dr. Herminia Palacio, deputy mayor for health and human services.  Credit Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

CLICK HERE - NYC - PRESS RELEASE - Health Department Reports Four More Babies Born With Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome in NYC

nytimes.com - by Marc Santora - December 7, 2016

At least four babies have been born in New York City with Zika-related brain developmental symptoms since July, the city’s health department said on Wednesday, bringing the total number of such births to five.

The numbers were announced in an alert the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sent to doctors, urging them to remain vigilant and to continue to warn pregnant women and sexually active women of reproductive age not using a reliable form of birth control against traveling to places where the virus is spreading.

With the growing Zika outbreak in Florida, it's a dangerous mistake to continue underestimating the virus. 

Complacency is the enemy.  (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

usnews.com - by Stephen S. Morse - August 1, 2016

We've seen it coming for months. Zika has been moving with hurricane intensity throughout South America and the Caribbean, appearing for the first time in 42 countries in the Western Hemisphere in less than two years. . . .

. . . We cannot afford to keep trying to catch-up every time another infection appears. . . .

. . . Zika is the infectious disease crisis now, but in our increasingly globalized and urban world, we can expect many more to come.

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