Covid-19 is far from the last pandemic of our generation. In recent years, there have been Sras, Mers, then Ebola, bird flu, Zika, HIV and, more recently, monkeypox viruses. Favored by our lifestyle, zoonoses, diseases transmitted to human animals, have multiplied, increasing the concern about new pandemics, Le Point and AFP report.
The human-animal interface has become quite unstable, said Dr. Mike Ryan, a World Health Organization emergency manager, a few days ago.
Monkeypox, caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals, most commonly by rodents, is the latest example of the multiplication of these zoonoses. These are infectious diseases that vertebrate animals can transmit to humans. And some of these are becoming human-specific, as Covid-19 is today.
According to the World Organization for Animal Health, about 60% of emerging diseases are of zoonotic origin. Appeared thousands of years ago, as humans intensified their interactions with animals by domesticating them, the frequency of these diseases has increased in the last twenty to thirty years.
The factors that favored this phenomenon are numerous. According to Prof. Marc Eloit of the Pasteur Institute, quoted by AFP, “the intensification of travel has allowed the faster and uncontrolled transmission” of these diseases.
To this factor are added others: disturbance of the ecosystem to the brutal intervention of humans, intensification of animal husbandry in industrial farms which also increased the risk of transmission of pathogens between animals. Trade in microbial wildlife has also increased human exposure to them. Massive deforestation has created conditions for contact between wildlife, domestic animals and humans.
When deforestation occurs, biodiversity is reduced; animals are lost that naturally regulate the existence of viruses, which allows them to spread much more easily, explains for AFP Benjamin Roche, biologist, specialist in zoonoses at the Research Institute for Development (IRD).
We now have a quick and easy way to investigate and respond to new viruses, says Marc Eloit, Pasteur Institute. We are also able to develop vaccines very quickly, as was the case with Covid-19.
But there are a number of potentially dangerous new diseases that we need to be prepared for, says Professor Eric Fevre, a veterinary infectious disease specialist at the University of Liverpool and the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya. According to him, this means focusing on public health in the most remote environments and studying the ecology of these natural areas more closely in order to better understand the interaction between different species.
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