Malaria Has Returned To Italy - Scientists Think Climate Link Likely - Times Of London

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SCIENTISTS have uncovered the first evidence that diseases such as malaria, long thought beaten in Europe, are making a comeback because of climate change.

Holidaymakers could be at risk this summer because the disease has already re-emerged in Italy, where Mussolini once drained marshes to try to eradicate it. Italy was declared malaria free in 1970 but cases of malaria are now being registered every year in the country’s southern regions.

“We are at the southern edge of the globe’s temperate area and that’s why Italy is being hit most by the shattering of climatic equilibriums. As a result we are importing illness from Africa,” said Francesco Ferrante, director-general of Legambiente, an Italian environmental association which has produced a new report on the hazards of climate change.

Other illnesses taking advantage of the warmer weather include tick-borne encephalitis. Up to 1993 only 18 cases of the illness — an acute virus-induced inflammation of the brain — had been reported in Italy since modern records began, but there have been almost 100 since, mostly around Venice. Visceral leishmaniasis, a potentially fatal tropical disease caused by parasites and transmitted by sandfly bites, is also making a comeback.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2534982,00.html