Zmena klímy – možný dopad (nielen) na obyvateľstvo - Prohuman

down, coercive sex and drug use can also increase, thereby enhancing HIV infection
risks, Butler observed. Severe heat, storms and floods stemming from
climate change can also destroy homes and livelihoods, harming people economically.
Whether a cause or consequence of the disease, financial woes can then
exacerbate HIV. The poor are less likely to use prophylactics to protect themselves
from the disease and less able to afford the medications to keep infections in
check. Poverty is a very important magnifier of risk of AIDS.
Weakening defences against other diseases
Other diseases that spread in relation to climate change can further harm HIV
patients. Because the virus chips away at the body‘s defences, opportunistic infections
can strike when a person‘s immunological guard is down. Diseases that
a healthy person may shrug off can be fatal to people with a compromised immune
system, while deadlier illnesses like cholera and malaria are more likely
to afflict them. The recent and tragic experience with HIV/AIDS, particularly in
sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, has shown how the activity of the otherwise
mostly dormant tuberculosis bacterium is much increased when the body‘s immune
surveillance is crippled by the human immunodeficiency virus. Researchers
are now concerned about these variables intersecting in regions facing war, famine,
and refugees stemming from climate change and leading to food shortages.
Patterns have already emerged in some countries. We found a link between food
insecurity and opportunistic infections in Uganda, especially among vulnerable
children population (e.g. street children, children who have not been breast-feeded).
In addition, people facing losses stemming from climate change are more
likely to despair and resort to intravenous drug use, increasing HIV transmission.
However, cautioned that the link between food security and disease susceptibility
isn‘t always a sure thing, whether for HIV or for related opportunistic infections.
Indeed, undernourished people may be a less attractive milieu for many pathogens.
After all, their objective is not to kill the weak and starving. Rather, they are
seeking, first, an ample source of nutrients and energy for replication and, second,
a host fit enough to pass on the next generation of pathogens to another human
host. Different manifestations of climate change can also have differing influence
on the virus. Desertification in central Africa could hasten the disease‘s spread,
while increased rainfall in East Asia may slow it down, for example.
The best case would be the world stops thinking that we can just adapt to climate
change and starts thinking we have to prevent it, as well, The same strategies
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