Peter Daszak: We are entering an era of pandemics – it will only end when we protect the rainforest
In late 2013, in the
village of Meliandou in rural Guinea, a group of children playing near a hollow
tree disturbed a small colony of bats hiding inside. Scientists think that
Emile Ouamouno, who later became the first tragic “index” case in the west
African Ebola
outbreak, was likely exposed to bat faeces while playing near
the tree.
Every pandemic starts
like this. An innocuous human activity, such as eating wildlife, can spark an
outbreak that leads to a pandemic. In the 1920s, when HIV is
thought to have emerged in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
scientists believe transmission to humans could have been caused by a bushmeat
hunter cutting themselves while butchering a chimpanzee.
In 2019, we can
speculate that a person from south-west China entered a bat cave near their
village to hunt wildlife for sale at the local wet market. Perhaps they later
developed a nagging cough that represents the beginning of what we now know as
Covid-19. Now, a growing human population, ever-encroaching
development and a globalised network of travel and trade have accelerated the
pace of pandemic emergence. We’re entering a new pandemic era…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/pandemic-era-rainforest-deforestation-exploitation-wildlife-disease
