Vietnam has raised warning on the rising risk of infection and emerging diseases recurrence due to climate change and abnormal weather conditions in recent years, said the Department of Preventive Medicine and Environment under the Ministry of Health. The department listed nine communicable diseases related to climate change namely A/H1N1 influenza, A/H5N1 influenza, dengue fever, malaria, cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, viral encephalitis and acute respiratory virus (SARS). Climate change and extreme weather have caused direct impacts on people’s health through the physical exchange between the body and the surrounding environment, resulting in physiological changes, habits, adaptability and the reaction of the body to those effects. The prolonged hot spells and rising air temperature have also affected human health, posing high risks for people with heart or neurological diseases. The climate change has also had indirect impacts on human health, causing some kinds of tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, accelerates growth and development of many types of bacteria and insects, diseases carriers (flies, mosquitoes, rats, fleas). The climate change has been found as one of the reasons behind the returning of some tropical communicable diseases and the appearance of new diseases, and behind the acceleration the mutation process of the influenza virus. Over the past years, the number of people suffering form such infectious diseases has been on the rise, claiming many lives in Vietnam, said health experts. Specially, hand-foot-mouth disease sickened 39,000 people in the first seven months of this year, including 14 deaths. Meanwhile, 25,300 cases of dengue fever were reported with 16 fatalities during the period. During the time, the country also recorded 354 people suffering from viral encephalitis and 313 with typhoid while 16 people were infected with meningococcal meningitis disease. Vietnam is estimated to identify around 3.5 million people with contagious diseases per year. (VietnamNet Aug 14)
