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Global warming set to fan HIV
news.com.au
CLIMATE change is the latest threat to the world’s growing HIV epidemic, say Australian experts who warn of the “grim” outlook in the fight against the infectious disease.
A leading professor of health and human rights, Daniel Tarantola, has cautioned that global warming will indirectly make citizens of developing countries even more vulnerable to death and severe ill health from HIV/AIDS.
“It was clear soon after the emergence of the HIV epidemic that discrimination, gender inequality and lack of access to essential services have made some populations more vulnerable than others,” said Prof Tarantola, of the University of NSW.
Those problems had not gone away, he said, and today extra threats were lurking on the horizon “as the global economic situation deteriorates, food scarcity worsens and climate change begins to affect those who were already dependent on survival economies”.
“Climate change will trigger a chain of events which is likely to increase the stress on society and result in higher vulnerability to diseases including HIV,” said Prof Tarantola, due to address an HIV forum in Sydney tonight.
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“Climate change will lead to food scarcity and poorer nutrition, putting people with perilous immune systems at more risk of dying of HIV, as well as contracting and transmitting new and unusual infections,” Prof Cooper said. (more…)
