These “tropical” diseases are flooding Europe. They can seriously threaten us [NEW PANDEMIC?]

Due to the spread of the monkey pox virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that monkey pox is no longer considered endemic, i.e. it occurs only in a specific region of the world (Africa). This is an important “update”, especially in the context of other infectious diseases associated with this continent, as more and more of them have recently appeared in Europe and have become a real threat to us.

1. From the beginning of May this year. over 2,5 thousand have been found worldwide. monkey pox cases
2. This disease has so far mainly occurred in West and Central Africa. The country that has recently struggled with the monkey pox epidemic is Nigeria, where more than 2017 suspected infections have been reported since 500
3. Monkey pox is not the only disease that “migrated” from Africa to Europe. On our continent, tropical diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile fever and qigongunia are increasingly often detected.
4. More information can be found on the Onet homepage

Lass fever

Earlier this year, while the world was preoccupied with the fight against the new extremely infectious variant of SARS-CoV-2 (Omicron), three British citizens were diagnosed with Lassa fever (one of them died). It is a very dangerous infectious disease caused by arenavirus infection, in the course of which hemorrhagic fever occurs. Since the pathogen attacks almost all tissues, it wreaks havoc on the body. The mortality rate in Lassa fever is 15-20 percent.

The disease is considered endemic by the WHO because so far cases have been concentrated in one region, as have the epidemics that have broken out. Lassa fever was first detected in the late 60s in Nigeria. This country is also one of three where the disease is still diagnosed most often (the others are Sierra Leone and Guinea). Over the past decades, the virus that causes this hemorrhagic fever has caused several epidemics in West African countries.

What is important, Lassa virus is on the WHO list of the 10 most dangerous pathogens with epidemic potential. This means that in the near future its range may expand so much that the disease it causes will become non-endemic.

West Nile fever

Another hemorrhagic fever has appeared in our geographic region – West Nile fever. It is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that causes infection with a pathogen from the flavivirus family. The course is often mild, but the disease “likes” to leave behind complications, especially neurological ones. In severe cases, meningitis may develop.

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West Nile virus was identified in the 30s in Uganda and for a long time was active in this part of Africa and in some Asian countries (especially in the Middle East). It was only in the 90s that the disease crossed the borders of these continents and reached Europe and North America.

Until recently, however, epidemics appeared rather in the eastern or southern part of the continent (Our Country, Romania). This has changed in recent years, as West Nile fever cases have begun to be detected in Western countries, including Spain and Germany.

In the first of these countries, the alert was raised in mid-2020, when 13 cases of West Nile fever were reported in Seville. The patients had a severe fever, most of them were diagnosed with encephalitis. In the same year, there were 20 cases and one death in Germany.

Dengue

Dengue is a viral disease that manifests itself in, inter alia, fever, pain in the head, muscles and joints and a characteristic rash. In severe course, it can lead to internal haemorrhage, thrombocytopenia and even shock. Complications, mainly neurological and related to the circulatory system, may also develop.

It is a disease with a long history (dating back to the third century AD), the range of which for years covered almost exclusively the countries of Southeast Asia. Its expansion, observed after World War II, is the result of not only intercontinental population migrations, but most of all ecological imbalance. Progress in the area of ​​urbanization (construction of rural and urban centers in places previously uninhabited by people) has led us to enter the territory of the most popular dengue vectors (DENV), mosquitoes.

Although today dengue is considered an endemic disease to over 100 countries around the world, local epidemics and diseases are concentrated in Africa, Asia and the Americas. In Europe, until recently, this tropical disease was diagnosed less frequently, and infections were the so-called drag cases (people who became infected with the pathogen in a place where it occurs more often fell ill, then “imported” the virus to their homeland). This is no longer the rule today.

According to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), by June 2 this year. over 1,3 million cases of dengue have been reported worldwide (the highest, as many as 1,1 million, in Brazil). No infection has yet been detected in Europe this year, but the spread of tiger mosquitoes, which carry the DENV virus, may soon change those statistics. The more so because in the last three years, dengue was diagnosed, inter alia, in France.

Why are there dangerous pathogens in Europe?

Endemic diseases are slowly becoming “non-endemic” for a reason. This is perfectly illustrated by the case of the current monkey pox epidemic and cases recorded in Poland. The source of “our” infections was, among others a trip to Gran Canaria, a Spanish island that is a very popular holiday destination for Poles (and not only).

Today, we can catch the disease, which is not common in our region, wherever we travel (and we travel in mass, visiting places that have been more and more inaccessible to tourists, including those “tropical”). When we add to this population migrations that occur for other reasons (flight from war, gainful employment, etc.), it is no wonder that pathogens migrate with us.

The second reason, apart from the movement of the population, why more and more pathogens with endemic potential appear in our region is the effects of climate change. The virologist prof. Agnieszka Szuster-Ciesielska from UMCS.

– Only in the last 150 years, the average temperature has increased by almost 0,8 degrees Celsius in the world and by about 1 degrees Celsius in Europe. It is estimated that by 2100 the global temperature may increase by another 1,8-4,0 degrees C. This causes, already visible today, the shift of climatic zones, and thus a change in the range of occurrence of animals, including insects. – she explained.

Will the diseases present so far and causing epidemics outside Europe reach us and become a home for us? Let the answer be a statement that, from the scientific point of view, can no longer be questioned: climate change and population migration cannot be stopped today.

We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time, we asked Orina Krajewska what, according to her, a holistic approach to health is. How to combine the three aspects – body, spirit and mind to enjoy balance and good health? You will hear about this and many other aspects of the topic in the latest episode of our podcast.