Global warming blamed for rise in malaria on Mount Kenya

Global warming has caused a seven-fold increase in cases of malaria on the slopes of Mount Kenya, a British-funded research team has found. A 2C increase in average temperatures around the mountain in the past 20 years has allowed the disease to creep into higher altitude areas, where the local population of four million has little or no immunity. The researchers, funded by the Department for International Development (DfID), found that the average temperature in the Kenyan Central Highlands had risen from 17C in 1989 to 19C today. Before the 1990s malaria was absent from the region because the parasite that causes it can mature only above 18C. However, malaria epidemics began among the population as average temperatures went over the 18C tipping point. The number of people contracting malaria during these epidemics has increased seven-fold in the past decade. In 2005, malaria-carrying anopheles mosquitoes were discovered in Naru Moro, more than 6,175ft above sea level.