The WHO has identified the climate crisis as a significant threat to the fight against malaria. There’s evidence suggesting that extreme weather events and increasing temperatures are contributing to a rise in malaria cases. Mosquitoes, carriers of the disease, thrive in warm, damp, and humid conditions, conditions that are expanding due to global warming.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, emphasized that the changing climate presents a considerable risk to efforts against malaria, especially in vulnerable regions. He stressed the urgent need for sustainable and resilient responses to combat malaria, coupled with immediate actions to mitigate global warming’s effects.
The latest world malaria report from the WHO has pointed out a lack of long-term data on the climate crisis’s impact. However, it highlighted how rising temperatures have led to malaria transmission in previously disease-free African highland areas. Severe flooding in Pakistan in the past year resulted in a five-fold increase in malaria cases, reaching 2.6 million from 500,000 reported cases in 2021.
Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, expressed concern about climate change drastically altering the landscape of malaria. He mentioned that the report’s discussion about the climate crisis’s potential impact might be conservative, and there could be more significant consequences due to secondary factors.
The report also outlined challenges to eradicating malaria, including insecticide resistance and the spread of Anopheles stephensi, an invasive mosquito species linked to malaria outbreaks. It’s resistant to insecticides and thrives in urban environments, posing increased risks in African cities.
Despite these challenges, there are optimistic signs. Initiatives like distributing improved bed nets, developing new insecticides and antimalarial drugs, and the introduction of effective vaccines such as R21/Matrix-M and RTS,S offer hope. However, Sands highlighted that the full potential of these tools is yet to be realized due to inadequate investment in malaria control, aggravated by the impacts of climate change.
Despite the array of tools available to combat malaria, there are still challenges in their comprehensive deployment due to insufficient investment and inadequate resources allocated for malaria control efforts.
Dr. Photini Sinnis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health acknowledges that the climate crisis will indeed impact malaria, but its precise consequences are challenging to predict.
The report from WHO noted a concerning trend: despite a slight decline in malaria cases, the numbers remain substantially higher than pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. In 2022, there were 249 million cases, up from 233 million in 2019. Deaths also increased, from 576,000 in 2019 to 608,000 in 2022, disproportionately affecting pregnant women and children under five, predominantly in Africa.
Among the threats outlined in the report, the spread of Anopheles stephensi, resistance to insecticides and antimalarial drugs like artemisinin, and growing urbanization heightening malaria risks in African cities were highlighted.
While there is hope due to the deployment of malaria vaccines and other initiatives, the full potential of these interventions is yet to be realized. Despite their effectiveness in reducing severe malaria cases and childhood deaths, the global community needs to increase investment and commitment to combat malaria, especially given the potential exacerbation of the disease by the effects of climate change.