"There is no one tale that seems to determine the story globally," Tatem said. "If we had to choose one thing, we would guess economic development, but that's kind of a cop out" because the specific mechanisms may still remain unclear, and controlling malaria might also help to kick-start development.
In any case, current malaria control efforts such as insecticide-treated bed nets, modern low-cost diagnostic kits and new anti-malarial drugs, have proved remarkably effective, with more and more countries achieving control or outright elimination. Unless current control efforts were to suddenly stop, they are likely to counteract the spread of mosquitoes or other malaria-spreading effects from anticipated temperature increases, Smith said.
Simon Hay, an author of t2he Nature paper and one of the chief architects of the Malaria Atlas Project, noted that modern malaria control efforts "reduce transmission massively and counteract the much smaller effects of rising temperatures."
"Malaria remains a huge public health problem, and the international community has an unprecedented opportunity to relieve this burden with existing interventions," he said. "Any failure in meeting this challenge will be very difficult to attribute to climate change."
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| Contact: David Smith smitdave@gmail.com 202-731-4896 University of Florida Source:Eurekalert |