Disease outbreaks to increase as weather warms

EUROPE could face an increase in outbreaks of diseases carried by insects and rodents as the climate on the continent becomes hotter and wetter, health experts said yesterday.

“These diseases are closely linked with climate change ... We need to address this risk,” Renaud Lancelot of the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development said.

Lancelot was one of 23 health experts attending a two-day European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)) meeting on the risk of so-called vector-borne diseases or illnesses carried by mosquitoes, sand-flies, ticks and rodents.