"Deadly Dozen" of Diseases Worsened by Climate Change

“Emerging infectious diseases are a major threat to the health and economic stability of the world,” said Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT3), a champion for the GAINS Program “What we've learned from WCS and the GAINS Program is that monitoring wildlife populations for potential health threats is essential in our preparedness and prevention strategy and expanding monitoring beyond bird flu to other deadly diseases must be our immediate next step.”

“The monitoring of wildlife health provides us with a sensitive and quantitative means of detecting changes in the environment,” said Dr. William Karesh, vice president and director of WCS’s Global Health Programs. Wildlife health monitoring provides a new lens to see what is changing around us and will help governments, agencies, and communities detect and mitigate threats before they become disasters.”

The Deadly Dozen

Many wildlife pathogens have been the focus of monitoring efforts, but few data exist on how diseases will spread in response to climate change. The following list includes those pathogens that may spread as a result of changing temperatures and precipitation levels. Monitoring efforts for these diseases need to be examined in tandem with meteorological data to uncover climate-related trends. The list is not a comprehensive one, and subsequent studies may eliminate pathogens from the list of those enabled by climatic factors.

• Avian influenza: Like human influenza, avian influenza viruses occur naturally in wild birds, though often with no dire consequences. The virus is shed by infected birds via secretions and feces. Poultry may contract the virus from other domestic birds or wild birds. A highly pathogenic strain of the disease—H5N1—is currently a major concern for the world’s governments and health organizations, specifically because it has proven deadly to domestic and wild birds, as well as humans, and has the potential to evolve into a strain that can spread from human to human. Current data indicate that the movement of H5N1 from region to region is largely driven by the trade in poultry, but changes in climate such as severe winter storms and droughts can disrupt normal movements of wild birds and can bring both wild and domestic bird populations into greater contact at remaining water sources.