Blaming global warming seems to be the favourite pastime in the corridors of power. State health minister Suryakanta Mishra is the latest to join the group. On Wednesday Mishra said in the Assembly that malaria has increased significantly in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation area this year due to global warming.

This year, 10,608 persons in Calcutta were diagnosed with malaria till June. Among them 843 suffered from falciparum malaria, which can turn fatal. On July 1, Uday Das died of the disease. Compared to 2008, the incidence of malaria has almost doubled this year, records till June 2009 state. The slide positivity rate (the rate of malaria detected in examined patients) has shot up to 17.3 per cent from 9 per cent last year, while the incidence of falciparum malaria has increased four times during the same time.

The meteorological department does not share Mishra’s views on changing climate. “Though there have been minor variations, overall there are no significant changes between the climate this year and in 2008,” says G.C. Debnath, the director of the Regional Meteorological Centre at Alipore.

Malaria experts are not buying the global warming theory. “A rise in the incidence of malaria is linked to the immune status of the exposed population and monitoring of malaria-prevention drives,” says Amitava Nandi, a former head of the proto-zoological division in the School of Tropical Medicine.

“The rate may also be higher this year because of greater recording of malaria cases,” pointed out entomologist Amiya Kumar Hati.

Experts feel that more than global warming, local monitoring (or the lack of it) by the civic body is primarily responsible for the surge in malaria cases in Calcutta.

Mishra said in the Assembly that the number of malaria cases had declined this year in the rest of Bengal. Does global warming affect only Calcutta?