Global climate change is bringing new risks to travellers in areas that have never seen tropical diseases before. And the latest warning to be issued by public health experts concerns the world's second most dangerous disease. After Malaria, schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia) is the most widespread disease in tropical climates, an infection of parasitic worms that causes serious health problems or death for over 200 million people every year.
There is an ongoing global effort to tackle the disease, with vaccines and huge public health efforts backed by the likes of Bill Gates, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently gave grant of $30 million (£20 million) to establish the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), a partnership at Imperial College London including the foundation, the World Health Organization and the Harvard School of Public Health. Carried by snails and flatworms, schistosomiasis was up until very recently confined to areas of the world with tropical climates and mostly Africa. However, there have recently been cases in Spain, Italy and Greece, leading to warnings that the spread of the invertebrates that carry the disease into the Mediterranean basin poses a previously unheard risk to locals and tourists alike.
There's been a noticeable uptick in cases due to the spread of a parasite-carrying flatworm, researchers at KU Leuven University in Belgium warn. According to the study, this health concern is predicted to worsen with climate change now f.