Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of climate change on the adequacy of the level of national surveillance of disease-spreading vectors in the UK.

Climate change has been identified as one of the factors for changes in the distribution of arthropod disease vectors in Europe.

Specific research on climate and environmental change has been conducted through academic collaborations under the Health Protection Research Units. Summaries of the risks and ongoing work has been published in peer-reviewed journals. This research can be viewed at the following link:

http://www.hpruezi.nihr.ac.uk/

Public Health England (PHE) has established surveillance and research, working with United Kingdom academics and international partners, to prepare for current and future vector-related risks in response to climate and environmental change. PHE’s assessment of the public health threats posed by Vector-Borne Disease in the United Kingdom because of climate change can be found at the following links:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(15)70091-5/fulltext

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/10/2145