Chikungunya In northern Italy

The recent outbreak of chikungunya, a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes, in the Italian province of Ravenna, has sparked an unusual debate among the scientists. Last month the Italian Health Ministry had officially confirmed the outbreak of chikungunya in the northern parts of the country. Acording to officials, more than 200 cases have so far been detected in Italy. One death was also reported. Sending alrm rings across the continent, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has warned that the debilitating tropical virus might sweep through the other European countries. Many experts blamed the changes in the temperature for the latest outbreak of the disease in Europe. According to Professor Antoine Flahault, the coordinator of French research on chikungunya, “Though the Tiger mosquitoes were present in Italy for several years, the increased temperatures and humidity make the climate more tropical and favour the proliferation of mosquitoes." The World Health Organisation officials have also underscored the same point. "We cannot say that the disease was caused by climate change, but the conditions in Italy are now suitable for the Tiger mosquito," said Dr Bettina Menne of the WHO about the outbreak. However, Professor Paul Reiter, the director of the Insects and Infectious Diseases Unit of the Paris-based Institut Pasteur, has come up with a different argument.

Prof. Reiter, who has also worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for over 20 years, has claimed in a recently published article that the WHO official’s statement is aimed at diverting attention from the real cause: “the increasing globalization of disease as a result of modern transportation.” He recalls an incident of finding tires that contained rainwater infested with Aedes albopictus (today’s Asian Tiger mosquito) in the US city of Houston two decades ago. He also discovered that the company which shipped scavenged tires to many Central American countries imported them from Japan. “The tiger arrived in Italy in the 1990s in tires from Atlanta, Georgia and is ubiquitous from the Alps to Naples,” says Prof. Reiter. Citing the endemics that gripped the tropical as well as the non tropical regions, he says, “the globalization of mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases is nothing new and we can expect further surprises in the future.” Reiter’s arguments have raised many eyebrows as he lashes out at the alarmists of the global warming saying they are actually distorting scientific facts in order to fit their arguments.

(Published on Business&Economy on November 1, 2007)