More people may contract malaria in the tropical highlands of Africa, Asia and South America as global warming makes the climate in these areas more suitable for the disease’s transmission, says a [s]SciDev[/s] report. The study, published in the [b]Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences[/b], notes that further factors that may influence the disease’s spread, including economic development, changes in human population patterns and adaptations in the mosquitoes that transmit malaria, need to be examined. Five existing malaria impact models were used to make predictions for the 2030s, 2050s and 2080s. Each predicted an extended disease transmission season in the highland regions of eastern Africa, SA, central Angola, the Madagascar plateau, central America, southern Brazil and the India and Nepal border.
[link url=http://www.scidev.net/global/malaria/news/rise-in-malaria-forecast-for-tropical-highlands.html]Full SciDev report[/link]
[link url=http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3286.full?sid=cdf31c0f-2681-40b7-a391-37dbe0547a9b]Full PNAS study[/link]