Severe floods that hit parts of eastern Australia earlier this year sowed death and millions of dollars of destruction. The heavy rainfall events also appear to have ushered in another unwanted effect: Japanese encephalitis. Normally confined to the tropics, the viral disease has now turned up in parts of Australia that have never experienced it before. So far the outbreak has affected at least 34 people and caused three deaths, The Washington Post reports.
“With accelerating climate change, we’re going to be in a world of hurt,” Tim Inglis, the head of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Western Australia, tells the newspaper, “with some of these diseases that have in the past been restricted in the tropics extending, as we’re beginning to see.”
February and March saw record flooding along Australia’s northeastern coast, bringing standing water that Culex mosquitoes, which carry the Japanese encephalitis virus, need to ...
