Climate change blamed for legionnaires' disease surge (in Britain)

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Climate change blamed for legionnaires' disease surge
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 18 October 2006

Britain has suffered its first deaths from infectious disease attributable to global warming, official figures suggest.

Cases of Legionnaires' disease, the bacterial lung infection which kills more than one in 10 of those it infects, reached record levels in August and September and experts say the extreme summer weather is the most likely cause of the rise.

Doctors say that as the world gets hotter, Britain could be threatened by diseases such as malaria, spreading from the tropics. In 2003, an estimated 2,000 UK deaths, mostly elderly people, were attributed to the 90-degree summer heatwave which was blamed on global warming.

But the record levels of Legionnaires' disease reported by the Health Protection Agency this summer are believed to be the first example of an increase in infectious disease in Britain driven by climate change.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article1886640.ece