Cholera is a major cause of death in the developing world. According to an article from the BBC (”Satellites map cholera outbreaks” 10 November) scientists are now able to predict cholera outbreaks because they appear to follow seasonal increases in sea temperature.

Scientists – as ever – are being innovative in their use of the available data.

Apparently they’ve taken satellite observations of sea surface temperature and also the amount of observed chlorophyll from plankton and noticed that they correlated with cholera outbreaks.  Rita Colwell from the University of Maryland has been leading this research.

In an interview on “the naked scientists” Professor Colwell  (”Predicting Cholera Outbreaks from Space” March 2008) noted that: “The areas that are affected mostly are the developing countries: India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, countries in the Middle East and Far East and countries where sanitation and safe drinking water are not available to all.” 

Meera Senthilingam, one of the naked scientists’ team noted that: “We’ve all heard about climate change in the news […] But one factor we don’t hear about is the effect climate change can have on human health and pandemics. A bacterial disease now thought to be exacerbated by climate change is cholera.”

As is so often the case we see the interconnectedness of emerging risks. Climate Change is a subject the Lloyd’s 360 project has devoted significant time to. Pandemics have been studied by the emerging risks team culminating in a report published in October.

Tags: Cholera, Climate change

This entry was posted by Trevor Maynard on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Exposure Management.