Britain faces a growing risk from mosquito-borne diseases as they spread across the Mediterranean with the onset of global warming, experts warn today.
They call for improved security to prevent disease-carrying insects reaching the UK.
Malaria has reached Greece, West Nile virus is in eastern Europe and chikungunya is in Italy and France, according to a report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.
High rainfall and warm temperatures would be ideal for the Asian tiger mosquito, the researchers say.
The dengue virus could also survive in the UK within decades – especially if there was a loss of the winter frosts that kill mosquito larvae and eggs, according to Dr Jolyon Medlock and Professor Steve Leach, from Public Health England.
Dr Medlock warned: "Although no non-native invasive mosquitoes have been detected in the UK so far, a better system to monitor imported used tyres, in which disease-carrying mosquitoes lay their eggs, needs planning."
Professor Leach said: “We are not suggesting that climate change is the only or the main factor driving the increase in vector-borne diseases in the UK and Europe, but that it is one of many factors including socioeconomic development, urbanisation, widespread land-use change, migration, and globalisation that should be considered."
* Meanwhile Edinburgh University researchers have found potential treatments for tropical diseases in cows.
The key is to find "benign" parasites that could be used as a vaccine against more dangerous diseases, according to their study.
Researchers found that calves infected with harmless parasites were 89% less likely to die from East Coast Fever than other animals.
The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
Professor Mark Woolhouse said: “This discovery suggests a completely new way to control a devastating disease in cattle, while reducing the use of antibiotics and environmentally damaging pesticides at the same time.
"It may also provide clues to new ways of combatting human diseases such as malaria.”
Jolyon M Medlock, Steve A Leach. Effect of climate change on vector-borne disease risk in the UK. Lancet Infect Dis 23 March 2015 [abstract]
Science Advances 20 March 2015
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