Originally published July 3 2005
Emerging diseases require global solution
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Potential worldwide diseases such as Ebola, SARS and avian flu demand a more holistic approach to disease control, according to Science Daily.
"There is only 'one health,' and future programs must factor in the complexity of how emerging diseases move among humans and other species."
Karesh and co-author Dr. Bob Cook--WCS vice president and chief veterinarian of the society's Wildlife Health Center--developed the "One World, One Health" concept in response to the increased vulnerability of humanity and animals to a host of diseases that are capable of adapting to other species and moving across the globe through the rapid transportation of goods and people.
Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals.
The AIDS virus may have entered human communities through the consumption of non-human primates with a similar virus that mutated.
In Central Africa, many subsistence hunters will take advantage of animal carcasses for protein, often infecting themselves and their families with deadly diseases in the process.
Estimates for the amount of wild, or "bush" meat consumed in Central Africa is over a billion kilograms a year, translating to an estimated 580 million individual animals alone.
According to a variety of sources compiled by WCS, the annual global trade in live wild animals includes roughly 40,000 primates, 4 million birds, and 640,000 reptiles.
To address these problems, Karesh and Cook call for a number of steps to integrate human and animal disease prevention efforts in a coordinated manner.
Recommendations include better surveillance of wildlife diseases to prevent outbreaks before they occur, shifting the cost of preventing and controlling outbreaks to animal traders, encouraging governments to improve the regulation of the animal trade and breaking down barriers among health disciplines.
"Failing to implement a cross-species, planet wide approach to these emerging health issues will cost more than we can afford.
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