What Can Be Done To Prevent A Future Pandemic?

April 26, 2020

What Can Be Done To Prevent A Future Pandemic?

EPIDEMIC & PANDEMIC-

An Epidemic is defined as an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time in a limited geographic area.

A Pandemic is a type of epidemic that occurs in a wide geographic areas in a wide geographic areas in many countries and nations and affects exceptionally large number of population.

An Epidemic if not controlled then it can turn into a Pandemic.

From the very first epidemic seen in 1200 B.C from the Influenza Virus in Babylon, Persia, Central Asia, Mesopotamia and Southern Asia or The Plague Of Athens in 430 B.C, Epidemics was always deadly in the pages of history. And day by day it might get deadlier.

THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS (430 B.C)

In 2019 A.D the SARS-Cov-2 Virus or Covid-19 Virus brought the world another deadly picture of epidemic.

Since we know that we do not have vaccines for everything, so Pandemic in near future can again happen. There many global killers present in our planet like the HIV, Zika Virus, Ebola Virus, Hepatitis C Virus etc. that can easily cause another death race in the entire world and can turn the world into another graveyard.

So, there are some best possible human efforts that can prevent a Pandemic to occur sooner or later.

STOP WILDLIFE TRADE
STOP WILDLIFE CONSUMPTION
STOP DESTROYING NATURE

WILDLIFE TRADE AND GLOBAL DISEASE EMERGENCE-

Threats to global health and risk factors for emerging infectious diseases run the gamut from climate change to poverty to security issues, but few are as immediately manageable as Global Trade In Wildlife. Trade in the wildlife provides disease transmission mechanisms at levels that not only cause human disease outbreaks but also threaten livestock, international trade, rural livelihoods, native wildlife population and the health of the ecosystems.

Live wildlife markets in Guangzhou, China trade in masked palm civets, ferret badgers, barking deer,

wild boars, hedgehogs, foxes, squirrels, bamboo rats, gerbils, various species of snakes, and endangered leopard cats, along with domestic dogs, cats, and rabbits all these add a deadly source towards infectious disease. Hunters, middle marketers, and consumers experience some type of contact as each animal is traded. Other wildlife in the trade is temporarily exposed, and domestic animals and wild scavengers in villages and market areas consume the remnants and wastes from the traded and potentially traded wildlife.Wildlife trafficking practices have resulted in the emergence of Zoonotic diseases.Focusing efforts at markets to regulate, reduce, or in some cases, eliminate the trade in wildlife could provide a cost-effective approach to decrease the risks for disease for humans, domestic animals, wildlife, and ecosystems.

WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING AND ZOONOTIC DISEASES

STOP LIVE MARKET OF ANIMALS

STOP WILDLIFE CONSUMPTION-

First of all there lies a difference between Wildlife Meat Consumption and Poultry or Livestock Based Meat Consumption. Though its quite debatable about meat consumption in various of the parts of the world since different Meat eating Population have their own choices of meat selection, production and its trade. Livestock or Poultry based Meat Consumption is the more or less a safer way of meat consumption provided they are effectively screened against various diseases and are grown in a Good Husbandry with proper hygiene and a Good farmland. The Livestock animals includes Chicken, Goat, Cattle, Pigs etc. Though it is to be kept in mind even Livestock meat is not 100% safe since it may also contain disease causing agents of viruses or bacteria.

On the other hand Wildlife Meat Consumption is the Open Source Of Zoonotic Diseases, since they practically grow in a zoo and jungle with a deadly viruses, bacteria also co-exists. Wildlife animals are also prone to various diseases. Zoonosis is a infectious diseases that are caused by Infectious Agents like bacteria, viruses, parasites, prions etc. that has jumped from animal to human through its consumption or by contact.Major modern diseases such as Ebola Virus Diseases and Salmonellosis are zoonoses. HIV was a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans in the early part of the 20th century, though it has now mutated to a separate human-only disease. Most strains of Influenza that infect humans are human diseases, although many strains of Bird Flu and Swine Flu are zoonoses; these viruses occasionally recombine with human strains of the flu and can cause pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 2009 Swine Flu . Taenia Solium infection is one of the neglected tropical diseases with public health and veterinary concern in endemic regions. Zoonoses can be caused by a range of disease pathogens such as virus, bacteria, parasites and fungi ; of 1,415 pathogens known to infect humans, 61% were zoonotic. Most human diseases originated in other animals; however, only diseases that routinely involve non-human to human transmission, such as rabies, are considered direct zoonosis.

Hence there lies a direct threat to get infectious and deadly strains of viruses and bacteria through Wildlife consumption which should be immediatly checked by FDA of different nations for the direct health benefits of the different nations and worldwide.

STOP DESTROYING NATURE-

DESTROYING NATURE UNLEASHES INFECTIOUS DISEASES. If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades and don’t just happen overnight. They are a result of things people do to nature. Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.The Nipah virus in South Asia, and the closely related Hendra virus in Australia, both in the genus of henipah viruses, are the most urgent examples of how disrupting an ecosystem can cause disease. The viruses originated with flying foxes, Pteropus vampyrus, also known as fruit bats. They are messy eaters, no small matter in this scenario. They often hang upside down, looking like Dracula wrapped tightly in their membranous wings, and eat fruit by masticating the pulp and then spitting out the juices and seeds. The bats have evolved with henipah over millions of years, and because of this co-evolution, they experience little more from it than the fruit bat equivalent of a cold. But once the virus breaks out of the bats and into species that haven’t evolved with it, a horror show can occur, as one did in 1999 in rural Malaysia. It is likely that a bat dropped a piece of chewed fruit into a piggery in a forest. The pigs became infected with the virus, and amplified it, and it jumped to humans. It was startling in its lethality. Out of 276 people infected in Malaysia, 106 died, and many others suffered permanent and crippling neurological disorders. There is no cure or vaccine. Since then there have been 12 smaller outbreaks in South Asia.That’s why experts say it’s critical to understand underlying causes. “Any emerging disease in the last 30 or 40 years has come about as a result of encroachment into wild lands and changes in demography,” says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and the president of EcoHealth.
Diseases have always come out of the woods and wildlife and found their way into human populations — the plague and malaria are two examples. But emerging diseases have quadrupled in the last half-century, experts say, largely because of increasing human encroachment into habitat, especially in disease “hot spots” around the globe, mostly in tropical regions. And with modern air travel and a robust market in wildlife trafficking, the potential for a serious outbreak in large population centers is enormous.In the Amazon, for example, one study showed an increase in deforestation by some 4 percent increased the incidence of malaria by nearly 50 percent, because mosquitoes, which transmit the disease, thrive in the right mix of sunlight and water in recently deforested areas. Developing the forest in the wrong way can be like opening Pandora’s box. These are the kinds of connections the new teams are unraveling. FOREST LOSS IS A MAJOR SOURCE OUTBURST OF INFECTIOUS AND DEADLY DISEASES. Hence it is to protected by any means for the containment of deadly diseases.