INDONESIA: Climate change brings new disease threats

JAKARTA, 15 May 2008 (IRIN) - The World Health Organization's (WHO) latest report stated that climate change would bring severe risks to developing countries such as Indonesia and have negative implications for achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and for health equity.

According to the country's Health Ministry, because of lack of funds, key sectors such as water and sanitation would not meet the goals by 2015.

The WHO report states that infections caused by pathogens transmitted by insect vectors are strongly affected by climatic conditions such as temperature, rainfall and humidity.

These diseases, according to the WHO report, include some of the significant killers, including malaria, dengue fever and other infections carried by insect vectors. The latest data from the Health Ministry for 2007 show 700 deaths from malaria and 1,570 from dengue fever, but many more go unrecorded. The incidence of diarrhoea, which if untreated can kill, is also expected to increase, transmitted mainly through contaminated water, the WHO report stated.

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