Worldwide, diarrhea is still a leading cause of death among children. And the pathogens that cause it are gaining ground again due to climate change. Diarrhea researchers at UMC in Amsterdam have now received a European grant worth millions to do something about it.
“Over the last twenty years we have been extremely successful in reducing the number of deaths from diarrhea,” says infectious disease specialist Vanessa Harris in the laboratory for medical microbiology and infection prevention at the Amsterdam UMC in Zuidoost. “Much investment around the world is being made to improve water supplies and countries are rapidly adopting new vaccinations, but these gains risk being lost if we do not factor the looming climate crisis into our policy decisions.”
In Amsterdam they mainly specialize in rotavirus. “The leading cause of diarrhea among young children kills more than 200,000 children each year,” says Harris.
The peculiarity of the 6.5 million euro grant from the European Commission is that it is not only intended for medical research, but with it a multidisciplinary research group will be created. This means that it will be examined from different disciplines and subject areas. Harris will coordinate it on behalf of the Amsterdam Global Health Institute: “That money will help bring together a consortium to understand how we can better counteract climate effects on the burden of diarrheal disease around the world.”
So not only infectious disease scientists, but also meteorologists, health economists and politicians will work together in Tanzania, Ghana, Romania and Italy to map the main dangers and solutions to them. For example, some diarrheal bacteria will benefit from higher temperatures, but parasites will thrive when there is a lot of flooding. In a city like Naples you hitchhike on landslides caused by heavy rains.
And anyone who thinks that Amsterdam will be spared all this will be disappointed. Harris: “We don’t have many diseases, but we run the risk of flooding and sewer overflows. It’s not without reason that the municipality warns against swimming in the canals when it rains very hard.”
2024-01-14 06:10:13
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