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Malaria

Climbs Into Warmer Highlands

The threat of collapsing ice sheets and super-hurricanes dominates many

discussions at the annual U.N. climate conference now under way in

Bali, Indonesia. On the litany of ills linked to climate change, the

slow spread of warm-weather diseases is more a quiet scourge, one whose

ultimate cost remains incalculable.

International health authorities say more than 1 million people, mostly

African children, die each year of malaria, caused by a parasite

transmitted by the bite of the female anopheles mosquito. Tens of

millions more suffer chronically from the debilitating disease. The

evidence lies not only in New Guinea. Similar highlands epidemics have

been reported in previously malaria-free areas of east Africa,

Madagascar and West Papua, on the western Indonesian half of this

island.