Extreme rainfall might be increasing malaria cases in India’s forested regions
Tree canopies combined with the hot and humid conditions are a conducive environment for stagnant rainwater to collect.
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In 1994, Manvati Nag, an Indigenous woman from Bijapur district in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, married and relocated to the village of Halbaras in forested Dantewada district in the east. Though the move was only about 80 kilometres, the life of Nag, then only 19, changed drastically. Never having fallen seriously ill in her parents’ home, she contracted malaria repeatedly in her new home: “once every year or two”, she estimates.
In recent years, the recurring malaria has only gotten worse for Nag. Since 2022, “I have been contracting the disease almost every three months, whether it is summer, monsoon or winter”, she notes.
Nag and others who live in India’s forested areas represent an anomaly: while the rest of the country trends downwards in malaria cases, these areas are projected to have malaria cases increase.
An increase in extreme rainfall may be a driving factor. In 2023, the World Health Organization’sWorld Malaria Report included a chapter on climate change impacts and disease management for the first time. It cited the example of Pakistan: after the country experienced massive floods in 2022, its malaria caseload increased fivefold due to stagnant pools of flood water where mosquitoes breed.
Tree canopies combined with the hot and humid conditions in India’s...
