TEHRAN –Climate change and the floods that hit the southeastern neighboring country two years ago, have jeopardized the malaria eradication program and caused the cases of malaria infection to spike from less than 1,000 to around 10,000, an official with the Health Ministry has said.

Hossein Farshidi made the remarks at the closing ceremony of the 7th International Conference on Climate Change that was held in Tehran, IRNA reported.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals; the disease is most commonly spread by an infected female Anopheles mosquito. The mosquito bite introduces the parasites from the mosquito's saliva into a person's blood.

It causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause yellow skin, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

According to the Malaria eradication program, the number of cases afflicted with the disease should still be zero or under a thousand. However, within a year the number of malaria cases has reached 10 thousand people and the patients are hospitalized.

Pointing out that climate change has increased malaria transmission, he added, “Climate change has also contributed to the increase in the number of other diseases such as asthma and similar cases.”

The increase in temperature is directly associated with an increase in the causes of deaths and disabilities, specifically cardiovascular diseases, Farshidi added.

Stating that the challenge is a universal one observed in most countries, he said, a country, a region, or a continent cannot take action by itself to deal with climate change impacts. Since it is affecting human health, we all have to cooperate to maintain human health.

Farshidi went on to say that the Ministry of Health and Medical Education has developed a section to act based on documents and scientific capacities in response to climate change.

All the organizations involved in this challenge, such as the ministries of Health, Industry and Mining, Agriculture, Transport, and Urban Development, should work together to mitigate the impacts of climate change and its consequences.

According to the World Health Organization, 13 million people die each year due to environmental factors in the world, and it is increasing worldwide. 6 billion people live in areas of the world that are highly susceptible to the consequences of climate change, including our country, he added.

Many different factors caused by climate change affect human health in both direct and indirect ways. These are all man-made factors. To avoid the situation getting worse, health-promoting steps must be taken for each action, Farshidi concluded.

Malaria elimination in Iran

In 2022, no indigenous case of malaria appeared in Iran for three years in a row, so the country was about to receive a certificate of malaria eradication from the World Health Organization.

There are 20 countries in the world that are moving towards the elimination of malaria; in the Eastern Mediterranean region, Iran is at the forefront.

If a country passes three years with no indigenous cases, the World Health Organization will grant it a certificate of malaria eradication.

There are about six species of Anopheles mosquitoes in Iran, of which there are no more than two or three species, which are actively involved in disease transmission in the south and southeast, and the rest are in the northern Zagros, from which there is no malaria transmission.

In April 2023, a Health Ministry official said that not a single death due to malaria was reported in the country over the past eight months of the current Iranian calendar year (started in March 2023).

“Over the past eight months, we have faced a four-fold increase in the incidence of malaria in the country, but fortunately, there have been no cases of death or local transmission of this disease,” Abdorreza Mir-Oliyaee said.

The endemic areas of malaria in Iran include the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province as well as the southern provinces of Hormozgan and Kerman, he added, ISNA reported.

In areas of Sistan-Baluchestan that share a border with Pakistan, one of the factors of the increase in the disease can be the increase in traffic through the unofficial border crossing, he explained.

“Another reason was the occurrence of floods in some states of Pakistan, and following this incident, the growth of malaria is not far from expected in the susceptible region.”

According to the WHO 2017 malaria report, the incidence rate of malaria in Iran has decreased significantly from 12,000 people in 2000 to 57 in 2017.

Between 2000 and 2014, the number of malaria-related deaths fell by 40 percent worldwide, from an estimated 743,000 to 446,000.

Resilient cities can deal with climate change

Moving toward creating and developing resilient cities is the best way possible to deal with climate change, Sahar Tajbakhah, the head of the Iran Metrological Organization, has said.

Fortunately, the window of compatibility with climate change is still open, IRNA quoted Tajbakhsh as saying.

She made the remarks at the Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Tehran.

Referring to the reports about weather in West Asia, Tajbakhsh noted that the highest temperature rise has been recorded in Iran and Iraq and the highest rainfall decline has been recorded in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.

Urban resilience is the ability or capacity of a city to survive and thrive in the face of disaster, any kind of disaster. It turns out that the capacities that cities and countries need to survive and thrive in the face of all these different threats are pretty broad.

MT/MG