Climate Change, Sands:“Malaria also on the Ethiopian highlands”

Peter Sands, director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, speaks at Dire

ROME - Climate change is also a threat to people's health.A risk and a fact, second Peter Sands, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, to tuberculosis and malaria. “There are regions, for example in Africa, which are demonstrating new vulnerabilities” underlines the manager, in an interview with the Dire agency.“Malaria has arrived where it wasn't there before, for example in the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia, where night temperatures are no longer low enough to kill the parasites.”

Then there are extreme weather phenomena. “Rising sea temperatures are generating cyclones and floods more frequently, from Malawi to Mozambique and up to Pakistan” Sands reports.“In this Asian country, cases of malaria infection have multiplied by four, resulting in a surge in the number of victims, almost always the most vulnerable people:children under five years of age and pregnant women".

The Fund, an organization founded in 2002 and based in Geneva, has the mission of strengthening the health systems of the most fragile countries.An environmental and health fragility together:a correlation confirmed by the choice to celebrate a Health Day on December 3, next Sunday, during the work of Cop28, the conference to combat climate change scheduled in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The initiative is carried out thanks to a contribution from the World Health Organization (WHO).The commitment, it refers in a note, is “to create a turning point for climate and health by bringing together a wide range of actors, including ministers, experts, civil society organisations, youth and business representatives with goal to put the climate-health agenda at the center of the debate."

A need that Sands anticipates in the interview.According to the director, “The impacts of climate change on global health are complex and multidimensional and malaria is an example of this”.Sands points out:“Unfortunately, we are not yet going in the right direction in the fight against this disease.”
This is confirmed by events and vicissitudes that concern several countries.“Places affected by malaria are often also the scene of conflicts” adds Sands, confirming the “multidimensional” nature of the challenge.“And we must consider that the parasites at the origin of the disease are becoming more resistant to the tools we use to fight it.”

However, some good news concerns vaccines. On November 21, approximately 330 thousand doses of the Rts,s type drug, authorized by the WHO, were delivered to Cameroon:it was the start of a distribution campaign on a continental scale.As of 2021, malaria has caused around 619 thousand deaths, in 19 out of 20 cases in Africa.