Climate change is 'distraction' on malaria spread

Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News: Sleeping under mosquito net Mosquito nets are proving effective - where they are available. Climate change will have a tiny impact on malaria compared with our capacity to control the disease, a study finds.

Noting that malaria incidence fell over the last century, researchers calculate that control measures have at least 10 times more impact than climate factors. Research leader Peter Gething from Oxford University described the climate link as an "unwelcome distraction" from the main issues of tackling malaria.

The paper, by scientists in the UK, US and Kenya, is published in Nature. "We were looking to quantify something that perhaps we already knew with regard to the interaction of climate and malaria," Dr Gething told BBC News.

"A lot of the studies proposing there would be a dramatic increase in a warmer world have been met with guarded criticism, and often what's been said about them surpasses what the actual science indicates. "So this redresses the balance a bit."...

Mosquito bed tent of netting, shot by Azt3cs, Wikimedia Commons