As glacial lakes burst their bounds in the Pakistani mountains, a first-of-its-kind report projects millions more people are at risk from diseases linked to climate change. 1 April 2025 6 min read by A nurse carefully adjusts an intravenous drip for a dengue patient at a hospital in Peshawar. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and prolonged monsoon seasons have created ideal breeding grounds for dengue-carrying mosquitoes.. Still wearing the rolled, white woollen cap that is traditional in the Chitral Valley of northwestern Pakistan, Fazle Akbar arrived at the district headquarter hospital in a visibly frail state. He was running a high fever and complaining of stomach pain, headaches and weakness. His medical records showed that Akbar had already completed a course of antibiotics, prescribed by a local physician, but his symptoms showed no signs of improvement. Doctors advised immediate hospitalisation for further diagnosis and sent his blood and urine samples to a Peshawar laboratory for further analysis. The test results sparked concern in the health department, as they confirmed the presence of Extensively Drug-Resistant (XDR) Salmonella typhi , a highly resistant strain of typhoid that has been spreading in other parts of Pakistan since 2016. “Presence of highly resistant typhoid strain is particularly concerning, as such cases are extremely rare and unexpected in the mountainous region,” said Fazle Qadir, Focal Person for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) system. But Akbar’s infection didn’t signal the first outbreak of the past year, and experts fear it won’t be the last. In April 2024, an outbreak had occurred in the Ayun and Arandu areas of Chitral, with scores of patients admitted to hospitals with XDR typhoid infections, Qadir recalled. Investigations linked reporting of drug-resistant typhoid in Chitral to climate-change induced water contamination, specifically due to so-called glacial lake outburst […]