Is global warming already having its visible impact in Africa? A malaria-bearing mosquito — anopheles arabiensis — rarely found in Kenya’s uplands is reaching out in the high country of Kenya!
Though, before it can be surely concluded, a painstaking work still remains to be done, both the Kenyan and international researchers are moving closer to revealing that climate change i.e. global warming is linked to the spread of malaria in African highlands! These highlands have long been largely free of this ancient plague.
Watching Mutunga hunt for larvae in his lush green field of corn and cassava, farmer Patrick Kabugu, 49, said,
It’s because the temperatures are going up… There’s more and more malaria — even in 1-year-old children.
50 miles north of Nairobi, it is in Karatina — amid coffee plantations on the Mount Kenya slopes — a decade ago people began noticing a malarial upsurge beyond the usual cases of travelers from the warmer lowlands.