The world is already seeing the increasing challenges of living on a planet with a rapidly changing climate. The newspapers are rife with headlines about droughts, fires, superstorms, and rising sea levels weekly, if not daily. But lurking behind these environmental changes is a less discussed public health crisis we are unprepared for: how the impact and proliferation of many infectious diseases will intensify as our planet warms. Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri, professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases at AUB, knows this growing crisis well and has been a leader in researching climate change's relationship to the appearance and spread of infectious diseases, particularly in low-resource countries.
“We are now living in a world where we expect new outbreaks," says Bizri. “And the climate crisis is going to be one of the major factors that will facilitate this. Warmer temperatures promote hospitable environments for a range of disease vectors to thrive, including in regions where they previously could not—diseases like malaria, Zika virus, and others that are migrating and establishing themselves in new areas unprepared for such intruders."
Lebanon, a nation already in the throes of economic and political instability, is now contending with this additional threat. “Leishmaniasis, a disease once very rare in Lebanon, is now a public health issue for us," says Dr. Bizri. “And this is happening across the Middle East. We are also seeing cases of dengue fever in places like the UAE because of big weather changes."
To make matters worse, Bizri says our primary defense against certain infectious diseases – our relatively high body temperature that is meant to be inhospitable to certain pathogens – is losing its effectiveness as organisms, mainly certain fungi, get used to hot temperatures in the surrounding environment.
And this new disease burden will not be evenly shared by the global population. It will be low-resourced countries, already struggling with weak and inadequate public health and healthcare infrastructure, that will be ill equipped to handle this new landscape. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw how big global health inequalities were, with poor countries getting vaccines much later than richer ones," Dr. Bizri emphasizes. “The same inequalities are going to happen with climate-related diseases."
Despite the severity of the situation, Dr. Bizri says the international community is failing to tackle the root causes of these emerging health threats. “The World Health Organization and other international bodies need better strategies," he urges. “We need to create a more coordinated and equitable plan that takes into account the impacts of climate change on disease, and we need to raise awareness among the medical community globally. Doctors can no longer just consider typical, local diseases when their patients present with symptoms, they must be aware that, in this new era, many more diseases are possible."
Though there are many challenges that lie ahead, Dr. Bizri and his colleagues at AUB are continuing to produce vital research studies on infectious diseases and their relationship to climate change. “We're looking at things like the emergence of new fungal diseases and the effects of global warming on antimicrobial resistance," Dr. Bizri shares. “There is a lot to learn, and this type of research will be important for developing the tools we will need to address future health threats."
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