Malaria climbs the mountain

Malaria continues to be a scourge of many tropical countries and climate change seems to be adding to the problem. A seven-fold increase in cases of malaria on the slopes of Mount Kenya have been found by a team of Kenyan and British researchers. A 2ºC increase in average temperatures around the mountain in the past 20 years has allowed the disease to creep into higher-altitude areas, where the local population of four million has had little or no previous exposure. The researchers, funded by Britain's Department for International Development (DfID), found that the average temperature in the Kenyan Central Highlands had risen from 17ºC in 1989 to 19ºC today. Before the 1990s malaria was absent from the region because the parasite can mature in the mosquito vectors only at a temperature above 18ºC. However, malaria cases began among the population as average temperatures went over the 18ºC tipping point. The number of people contracting malaria News focus during these outbreaks has increased seven times in the past decade. In 2005, malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes were discovered in Naru Moro, more than 1,900 metres above sea level. The team, from the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, said that, while similar outbreaks elsewhere had been attributed to multiple factors, including drug resistance and changes in land use, the only change here had been the rise in temperature. " The seven-fold increase is directly attributable to man-made climate change. One of the problems in making the link between climate change and malaria is that natural factors usually have a part to play, " it said. Some people " claim A new study finds disease outbreaks are increasing at higher altitudes around Mount Kenya, thought to be as result of global warming. Nigel Williams reports.