On 12 June 2008, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) held a meeting outlining their initial risk assessment findings concerning the impact of climate and environmental changes on so-called vector-borne diseases. These illnesses are carried by mosquitoes, sand-flies, ticks and rodents and include dengue, West Nile and chikungunya fever, nephropathia epidemica and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE). According to the risk assessment, climate change may increase the risk of these disease outbreaks in the future.

Director of the ECDC, Zsuzsanna Jakab, said: “The climate and environmental changes being predicted by experts will alter the risk to Europe from vector borne diseases. We are likely to see the spread of diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis, or even chikungunya fever, to places where they have not been seen before.”

Disease vectors are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. Europe’s changing climate is therefore likely to impact these vectors, leading to an increase in the numbers of people affected by vector-borne diseases.

The ECDC cautioned that tick-borne encephalitis, a dangerous viral infection of the central nervous system, had been spreading rapidly across the continent. “The number of human cases in all endemic regions of Europe has increased by almost 400% in the past 30 years,” it said.

Chikungunya fever, another viral illness, which was previously only found in tropical countries, was first transmitted to the European continent in 2007. It took only one infected man, bitten by an Aedes albopictus mosquito on his return from Kerala India, to trigger an outbreak affecting nearly 250 people in Ravenna Italy.

Denis Coulombier, the head of the ECDC’s Preparedness and Response Unit, said “We have to prepare for these risks... We need to have the capacity to rapidly respond when [these diseases] emerge”.