Climate Change Impacts Revealed: Disease in Peru

Global warming is hitting Peru hard: More water stress, more migration, more disease.

In tropical countries like Peru, health experts are keeping a close eye on climate change. Rising temperatures can change the way diseases behave, while collateral effects — from the retreat of glaciers that provide vital drinking and irrigation water to more frequent, intense storms and flooding — increase the burden on developing economies.

As diseases like dengue, bartonellosis and malaria spread, pressures mount on already understaffed, underfunded health services. As crops dry up and farmers migrate to urban shantytowns lacking clean water and basic sanitation, the burden is amplified.

"If the environmental impacts are unavoidable, the health sector needs to be mobilized so that the health impacts become avoidable," said Dr. Carlos Corvalán, Pan American Health Organization senior adviser on sustainable development and environmental health in Brazil.