Health
Climate hazards make 58% of infections diseases in people worse, study shows – Global News
Climate hazards such as flooding, heat waves and drought have worsened more than half of the hundreds of known infectious diseases in people, including malaria, hantavirus, cholera and anthrax, a study says.
Researchers looked through the medical literature of established cases of illnesses and found that 218 out of the known 375 human infectious diseases, or 58%, seemed to be made worse by one of 10 types of extreme weather connected to climate change, according to a study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change.
The study mapped out 1,006 pathways from the climate hazards to sick people. In some cases, downpours and flooding sicken people through disease-carrying mosquitos, rats and deer. There are warming oceans and heat waves that taint seafood and other things we eat and droughts that bring bats carrying viral infections to people.
Doctors, going back to Hippocrates, have long connected disease to weather, but this study shows how widespread the influence of climate is on human health.
“If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Doctors, such as Patz, said they need to think of the diseases as symptoms of a sick Earth.
“The findings of this study are terrifying and illustrate well the enormous consequences of climate change on human pathogens,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University infectious disease specialist, who was not part of the study. “Those of us in infectious diseases and microbiology need to make climate change one of our priorities, and we need to all work together to prevent what will be without doubt a catastrophe as a result of climate change.”
In addition to looking at infectious diseases, the researchers expanded their search to look at all type of human illnesses, including non-infectious sicknesses such as asthma, allergies and even animal bites to see how many maladies they could connect to climate hazards in some way, including infectious diseases. They found a total of 286 unique sicknesses and of those 223 of them seemed to be worsened by climate hazards, nine were diminished by climate hazards and 54 had cases of both aggravated and minimized, the study found.
The new study doesn’t do the calculations to attribute specific disease changes, odds or magnitude to climate change, but finds cases where extreme weather was a likely factor among many.
Study lead author Camilo Mora, a climate data analyst at the University of Hawaii, said what is important to note is that the study isn’t about predicting future cases.
“There is no speculation here whatsoever,” Mora said. “These are things that have already happened.”
One example Mora knows firsthand. About five years ago, Mora’s home in rural Colombia was flooded _ for the first time in his memory water was in his living room, creating an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes — and Mora contracted Chikungunya, a nasty virus spread by mosquito bites. And even though he survived, he still feels joint pain years later.
Sometimes climate change acts in odd ways. Mora includes the 2016 case in Siberia when a decades-old reindeer carcass, dead from anthrax, was unearthed when the permafrost thawed from warming. A child touched it, got anthrax and started an outbreak.
Mora originally wanted to search medical cases to see how COVID-19 intersected with climate hazards, if at all. He found cases where extreme weather both exacerbated and diminished chances of COVID-19. In some cases, extreme heat in poor areas had people congregate together to cool off and get exposed to the disease, but in other situations, heavy downpours reduced COVID spread because people stayed home and indoors, away from others.
Longtime climate and public health expert Kristie Ebi at the University of Washington cautioned that she had concerns with how the conclusions were drawn and some of the methods in the study. It is an established fact that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has led to more frequent and intense extreme weather, and research has shown that weather patterns are associated with many health issues, she said.
“However, correlation is not causation,” Ebi said in an email. “The authors did not discuss the extent to which the climate hazards reviewed changed over the time period of the study and the extent to which any changes have been attributed to climate change.”
But Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard School of Public Health, Emory’s del Rio and three other outside experts said the study is a good warning about climate and health for now and the future. Especially as global warming and habitat loss push animals and their diseases closer to humans, Bernstein said.
“This study underscores how climate change may load the dice to favor unwelcome infectious surprises,” Bernstein said in an email. “But of course it only reports on what we already know and what’s yet unknown about pathogens may be yet more compelling about how preventing further climate change may prevent future disasters like COVID-19.”
© 2022 The Canadian Press
Health
MUHC opens Quebec's first multidisciplinary referral centre for endometriosis – McGill University Health Centre
Montreal, March 28, 2023 – The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is proud to launch Quebec’s first multidisciplinary referral centre for multisystem endometriosis. EndoCARES, or the Endometriosis Centre for the Advancement of REsearch and Surgery, aims to provide patients suffering from pain and infertility due to endometriosis with timely access to specialized diagnostic imaging, followed by multidisciplinary care based on individual needs.
Endometriosis is an inflammatory condition where endometrial-like tissue (similar to the inner lining of the uterus) grows outside of the uterus. Affecting about 1 in 10 women of reproductive age, it commonly causes infertility and debilitating pelvic pain, often severe enough to limit a woman’ s ability to carry out normal daily activities.
“While half of women with infertility and up to 70 per cent of those with chronic pelvic pain have endometriosis, studies show an average delay of seven years from the start of symptoms to diagnosis,” explains Dr. Togas Tulandi, chief of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the MUHC. “EndoCARES aims to significantly reduce this delay by uniting a team of gynecologic surgeons specialized in minimally invasive surgery – more specifically, in the removal of endometriosis lesions – along with other specialists, such as bowel surgeons, urologists, radiologists and fertility specialists, in a single patient-centered clinic.”
Bottom row, left to right: Dr. Togas Tulandi; Karine Rousseau, operating room nurse; Dr. Jessica Papillon-Smith, and Dr. Srinivasan Krishnamurthy.
EndoCARES specialists come together regularly to discuss complex surgical cases and devise the best treatment strategies to offer patients. Meanwhile, a dedicated nursing staff provides continuity of care for the patients by facilitating the coordination of care between specialists and monitoring post-operative recovery following complex surgeries.
A centre of excellence
Drs. Dong Bach Nguyen and Andrew Zakhari, co-directors of the centre, both pursued additional training at renowned endometriosis hubs in Europe after completing minimally invasive surgery fellowships in Ottawa and Toronto respectively. As a result, patients treated at EndoCARES now benefit from innovative surgeries specific to endometriosis not previously offered in Quebec. “In Europe, several countries have established centres of excellence to provide specialized care to patients affected by endometriosis. Training in these centres allowed us to bring back not only new surgical techniques, but also the foundations to build an endometriosis referral centre for women with multi-organ endometriosis in Quebec,” explains Dr. Nguyen.
“The primary objective of this centre is to provide women with severe endometriosis affecting other organs like the bladder,bowel or diaphragm, with dedicated surgical and radiological expertise,” says Dr. Zakhari. Along with Drs. Srinivasan Krishnamurthy, Fady Mansour, Jessica Papillon-Smith and Togas Tulandi, this team of surgical gynecologists is committed to improving the care of Quebec women suffering from endometriosis.
Many questions remain unanswered
“Today, we still do not understand the exact cause of endometriosis, nor do we have a cure,” explains Dr. Tulandi, who is also an associate investigator at the Child Health and Human Development Program at the Research Institute of the MUHC.
Moving forward, EndoCARES aims to enhance basic, epidemiological and clinical research in endometriosis with the establishment of a patient registry that will function as a database for future research. Additionally, the program will facilitate international networking, collaborative research and the standardization of clinical practice through the exchange of ideas and experiences.
EndoCARES’ state-of-the-art clinical care and forthcoming research are made possible in part by generous donations made to the MUHC Foundation, which has pledged to raise $700,000 in support of personnel and equipment for the EndoCARES program.
“Endometriosis is very common and yet, so many women endure years of pain before receiving a diagnosis. This is completely unacceptable. The MUHC Foundation is proud to support the EndoCARES program, because it will change women’s health care for the better and reduce the pain and uncertainty so many women endure,” says Julie Quenneville, president and CEO of the MUHC Foundation.
Someone to reach out to
It took five long years before Anisa Gjoka was referred to Dr. Andrew Zakhari and diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis at 25 years old. “On February 8, 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, I finally had my surgery,” recounts Anisa. “After a four-hour surgery, and with only four small incisions, they were able to carefully remove the endometriosis lesions, leaving all of my organs intact!”
Today, at 28 years old, Anisa maintains a pain-free lifestyle, something that seemed unimaginable before entering under the expert care of Dr. Zakhari. “It gives me great peace of mind to know that EndoCARES exists – that there is finally someone for me to reach out to whenever I’m in need, and that the young women experiencing their first symptoms will be spared years of suffering and will be cared for by a multidisciplinary team of experts, all in one place.”
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About the McGill University Health Centre
The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is one of the world’s foremost academic health facilities. Building on the tradition of medical leadership of its founding hospitals, the MUHC provides exceptional multidisciplinary patient-centric care in French and in English. Affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of McGill University, the MUHC continues to shape the course of adult and pediatric medicine by attracting clinical and research expertise from around the world, assessing the latest in medical technology, and training the next generation of medical professionals. In collaboration with our network partners, we are building a better future for our patients and their families; for our employees, professionals, researchers and students; for our community and above all, for life. www.muhc.ca
Media contact:
Rebecca Burns
McGill University Health Centre
[email protected]
514-929-1329
Several public health units in southwestern Ontario say there’s been a rise in cases of whooping cough across the region.
Residents in the Southwestern Public Health region are being urged to get vaccinated against the respiratory illness after 82 cases of whooping cough were recorded from January 2022 to the end of February.
Meantime, Huron Perth Public Health has confirmed at least 21 cases of the illness so far this year, compared to only three cases last year. The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit said last week that it counted 18 cases since November, 2022.
Written by: Ian McCallum
NEWS RELEASE
NIAGARA HEALTH
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Niagara Health’s COVID-19 assessment centre and COVID, cold and flu care clinics (CCFCC) will permanently close on Friday, March 31.
COVID-19 testing will be available at select pharmacies across the region, and the prescription drug Paxlovid will continue to be available through family physicians and at select pharmacies across the region. Remdesivir infusion therapy, which aids in treating COVID-19, will be available in the community.
Niagara Health’s first assessment centre opened on March 17, 2020, at our Niagara Falls Site and has since administered more than 327,000 swabs. The centres served as the primary screening and testing locations for COVID-19 in the region. The Niagara Falls centre is the final of the three to close.
Closing these operations will help our health human resources efforts by allowing teams to return to their regular work or to NH priorities and help address staffing pressures and support for those providing frontline care.
“Working with our partners, we also opened an additional temporary location in Niagara Falls to test hospitality and tourism sector workers,” says Zeau Ismail, director of interprofessional practice, research and education; director lead at COVID-19 assessment centre and COVID, cold and flu care clinic. “Community health-care professionals, including family physicians, stepped up to work at these centres, in addition to a number of redeployed hospital staff and physicians.”
Niagara Health, along with partnering members of the Niagara Ontario Health Team-Équipe Santé Ontario Niagara (NOHT-ÉSON), operated five CCFCCs to test, assess and provide treatment for people with COVID-19 and other cold and flu-like illnesses. Since opening in 2022, the CCFCCs and Niagara Health’s clinical assessment centre have had more than 1,900 visits.
After March 31:
- If a person has symptoms of a respiratory illness, they are encouraged to call their primary care provider if they have one as the first option for guidance and care.
- If someone develops severe symptoms, they are urged to go to their nearest emergency department or call 9-1-1.
“We are incredibly grateful to our staff, physicians and partners, both on the frontlines and behind the scenes, who helped make the ACs and CCFCCs possible throughout our fight against COVID-19,” says Ismail.
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