CLIMATE CHANGE
When most people think of dangerous infections, they picture bacteria or viruses. But for infectious disease specialists like Peter Chin-Hong, one of the most insidious threats lurking in hospitals and clinics today is fungal.
Chin-Hong’s case list is long: a healthy 29-year-old marathon runner from California’s Central Valley whose heart lining was invaded by coccidioides, a soil-dwelling fungus; a lung-transplant recipient coughing up mould nodules – fungal growths scattered throughout his lungs – after stopping antifungal medication; and a 45-year-old woman with poorly controlled diabetes, infected by a black fungus that destroyed part of her face and spread to her brain. Despite multiple operations and treatment, she died in hospital.
