U.S. unprepared for climate-induced disease outbreaks
for the CDC‘s vector-borne disease division in its 2011 budget proposal.
The Senate restored the $26.7 million, but the funding is still waiting for approval by the House.
Intelligence and public health officials are particularly concerned of the spread of these infectious diseases across Asia and Africa and its potential to destabilize already fragile countries.
Malaria, cholera and other diseases are now being detected in parts of Asia and Africa where they have never been seen before.
This spread of disease along with food and water scarcity and the effects of extreme weather events on critical infrastructure like electricity, roads, and water could undermine fragile countries and overburden the U.S. military with humanitarian relief efforts.
The CIA’s Center on Climate Change and National Security has placed countering the spread of diseases as one of their top priorities, while the Department of Defense is concerned about the potential for these outbreaks to destabilize countries and drive conflict.
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has been particularly worried about the spread of diseases in Africa and is concerned over its long term stability in light of such trends.
In 2000 the National Intelligence Estimate reported that “climatic shifts” were likely to cause malaria and yellow fever to spread to new areas.
Thomas Fingar, chairman of the NIC, told Congress in 2008 that the Defense Department’s Africa Command “is likely to face extensive and novel operational requirements” as a result of these conditions.
Addressing public disease outbreaks in these developing countries, which often lack modern health care systems and communications networks, will prove to be an ongoing challenge.
A large outbreak could quickly overwhelm local governments and ignite a large exodus of infected victims across international borders causing a serious public health risk.
The NIC concluded in a recently released report that, “There are no international contingency plans for such an occurrence, nor are even the basic information systems in place to link [disease reporting] to potential response mechanisms like the UN Security Council or NATO.”
The CDC has distributed $5 million in grants to ten states and cities for climate related health risks and the National Institutes of Health used some stimulus funding to award grants for studies that examined which populations and areas would be most vulnerable to climate change in the United States.
Officials are still worried, despite these investments.
Frumkin warned that “We’re making progress, but it’s a slower progress than it needs to be.”
“We need to be ready not in 20 years or in 30 years, but relatively soon.”
