The President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, expects exotic infectious diseases to spread in Germany as a result of climate change. Climate change is leading to an expansion of the habitats of mosquitoes and ticks in Germany, Wieler told the Funke Group newspapers. Many mosquito and tick species could transmit viral, bacterial, and parasitic infectious agents.
Doctors would have to be "sensitized" to the occurrence of exotic infectious diseases that would otherwise only occur after travel. The RKI boss named Zika, Dengue or the West Nile virus and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) as examples. But a return of malaria is also possible. The replication of viruses in mosquitoes is temperature-dependent, so that higher temperatures over longer periods of time increase the likelihood of infections from mosquito bites.
The FDP health politician and doctor Andrew Ullmann also expects that due to the climate-related spread of tick and mosquito populations, diseases will increasingly appear in Europe and Germany "that were previously unknown in our climatic regions". Ullmann asked to react to the development.
"Further research and innovation initiatives are necessary to better understand the effects of climate change on the spread of pathogens and to take effective measures," Ullmann told the Funke newspapers.
