"LAGOS - Global warming will cause a catastrophic rise in mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya, spreading them to less affected places including Europe and the United States, a World Economic Forum (WEF) report said this month.
That is raising concern over global efforts to eradicate a host of debilitating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that still cause immense suffering among millions of the world's poorest people, even though they can be prevented or cured.
NTDs is a broad term that describes a group of 20 infectious illnesses, including dengue, lymphatic filariasis, soil-transmitted helminth infections, and trachoma. Many of them are vector-borne - spread by flies, mosquitoes and other insects - and mostly found in poor communities in tropical and subtropical regions of the world.
Altogether, more than a billion people are impacted by NTDs, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, and they cause thousands of preventable deaths each year.
Many more people are blinded, disabled and disfigured due to the diseases, which perpetuate a cycle of poverty, keeping millions of children out of school and adults from work."
Bukola Adebayo reports for Thomson Reuters Foundation January 30, 2024.
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