‘Small bite, big threat’ this summer!

It’s World Health Day today and the WHO (World Health Organization), with its theme ‘small bite, big threat’, will be discussing the threat that vector borne diseases pose to Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, North Korea, Myanmar and Thailand - countries where people are more than 40% at the risk of malaria.

Every year summer in India brings threat of several vector borne diseases (malaria, dengue, cholera) which are contracted by drinking water or eating contaminated food, with the bacteria Vibrio Cholerae.

According to some studies, climate change such as increase in warmer climates could cause water-borne diseases to become more frequent. Climate change could exacerbate the lack of available fresh water as annual mean rainfall decreases in many areas and it is known fact that diarrhoeal diseases are largely attributed to unsafe drinking water.

Changes in temperature, rainfall and humidity affect the transmission of malaria, a global endemic. Malaria is one of the most serious and complex public health problems. About 400-500 million cases of malaria and more than 1 million malaria-related deaths occur globally each year.

According to International Journal of Laboratory Hematology, 200,048 cases of malaria were reported in 2013, till the month of July out of which 51 people lost their lives. 11,591 cases of dengue were reported during the same time out of which 41 people lost their lives.

Photo by health.india.