Peru is taking extraordinary measures such as banning households from filling vases with water, as it battles its worst dengue outbreak on record, a crisis that experts have linked to increased rainfall and warmer temperatures as the climate changes.
Climate change is likely the culprit for mosquitoes arriving earlier, as warming temperatures were seen to impact diseases transmitted by mosquitoes in other places.
Dengue fever is on the rise in U.S. territories in the Caribbean, and recent study estimates more than half of children in the U.S. Virgin Islands have had a prior infection.
The climate emergency would bring far wider-reaching health impacts, Prof Dame Jenny Harries said, with food security, flooding and mosquito-borne diseases posing threats.
A Squirrel Hill woman was hospitalized recently after contracting West Nile Virus, the first human case in Allegheny County this year, according to the county health department.
