A leading public health researcher says poverty has a bigger influence than climate change on Pacific people's vulnerability to infectious diseases.
Professor Michael Baker says New Zealand hospital admissions for infections such as skin abscesses, rheumatic fever and gastric illness, have increased by 50 per cent in the past 20 years, with Maori and Pacific people twice as vulnerable as others.
He says there is solid evidence that rising economic inequality fuels disease, while the effects of ongoing climate change on various infectious diseases in Pacific nations is harder to predict.
"The thing we do know for certain is that much bigger factors are really related to poverty. And infectious diseases love poverty. They've got a phenomenal history of doing very well in times of social and economic disruption and have always been rife in deprived overcrowded communities."
Professor Baker says a new study is just about to start in New Zealand to try and find out why Maori and Pacific people are 40 times more likely to succumb to rheumatic fever than the general population.
