Science        
27 April 2012 vol 336, issue 6080, pages 381-508
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

Policy Forum
Public Health
Monitoring EU Emerging Infectious Disease Risk Due to Climate Change
Elisabet Lindgren 1, Yvonne Andersson 2, Jonathan E. Suk 3, Bertrand Sudre 3, Jan C. Semenza 3,*
1 Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
2 Formerly at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control l, SE-171 82 Solna, Sweden.
3 Office of the Chief Scientist, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, SE-171 83 Stockholm, Sweden.

In recent years, we have seen transmission of traditionally “tropical” diseases in continental Europe: chikungunya fever (CF) in Italy in 2007, large outbreaks of West Nile fever in Greece and Romania in 2010, and the first local transmission of dengue fever in France and Croatia in 2010 (1–3). These events support the notion that Europe is a potential “hot spot” for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) (4). Major EID drivers that could threaten control efforts in Europe include globalization and environmental change (including climate change, travel, migration, and global trade); social and demographic drivers (including population aging, social inequality, and life-styles); and public health system drivers (including antimicrobial resistance, health care capacity, animal health, and food safety) (5, 6). Climate change is expected to aggravate existing local vulnerabilities by interacting with a complex web of these drivers (6). For example, increases in global trade and travel, in combination with climate change, are foreseen to facilitate the arrival, establishment, and dispersal of new pathogens, disease vectors, and reservoir species.