Patz, J.A. and S.H. Olson (2006). Malaria risk and temperature: Influences from global climate change and local land use practices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(15), 5635–5636.

Abstract

A million people die of malaria each year, and 75% of those are Af rican children (www. cdc.govmalaria). Recent resurgence in the East Af rican highlands involves multiple factors, f rom climate and land use change to dr ug resist ance, variable disease control ef forts, and other sociodemographic factors (1). But malaria is an extremely climate-sensitive tropical disease, making the assessment of potential change in risk due to past and projected war ming trends one of the most import ant climate changehealth questions to resolve. Pascual et al. (2) now prov ide import ant new insights toward answering this malariaclimate question in their article in this issue of PNAS.