Dr. Neil Vora has spent much of his career chasing and treating outbreaks of infectious diseases, from the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa to Covid-19 in New York City.
Your recipe to stop the following: protect nature.
Vora, epidemiologist of Conservation International, believes that public health treatment institutions on prevention. This is a mistake, he says, because almost Two thirds Or emerging infectious diseases are caused by pathogens that originate in animals that have risen to people, often as results of or Environmental changesAs deforestation.
In other words: human health, animal health and environmental health are interconnected.
In an article published today in The lancetVora and his colleagues advocate an approach to pandemic threats that cover “health.” He hopes that this idea will be fundamental for the negotiations of the World Health Organization next week, aimed at forging a global agreement to prepare and prevent the next pandemic.
Vora spoke with Conservation News to talk about this approach, his article in the Lancet and his personal experiences that some of the most virulent diseases in the world face.
Ask: To start, what is this “health” movement?
Neil Vora: Health is the idea that human health is inextrecited to the health of other animals and the environment. The term really has tasks in recent years, even at the highest levels of global policy formulation, such as the World Health Organization and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
But this is a concept that many indigenous cultures and traditional cultures worldwide have understood the implicity for hundreds, if not thousands of years: the well -being of the communities is linked to the well -being of their surroundings. Finally, he is gaining traction in modern scientific circles, because we are seeing the consequences of our planet in anguish in the form of more pandemics, jumps of chronic diseases and the mental health of Woresingen.
P: Have you already seen changes in your patients?
VORA: My personal experience reflects much of what science shows: a growing prevalence of new infectious diseases and the stubborn persistence of historical devastating infectious diseases.
In the first, any of us who have read the news are familiar with diseases such as Ebola, Zika, Covid, Mpox and Aviar Flu. But I think the latter goes under discussion. I have the honor of being a doctor in a public clinic of tuberculosis in New York City. It is possible that people do not know that tuberculosis is the greatest murderer of infectious diseases in the world; Kill more than one million people every year. Each of these deaths is preventable, which makes one an equal tragedy.
As the world faces a growing number of climatic disasters every year, the medical community is finding its ability to provide care for patients. For example, in the United States we are seeing how forest fires are exacerbating asthma, which hits emergency rooms with patients. We have to admit that all these threats are interconnected, and conservation investment can avoid some of the consequences for subsequent health.
Q: Let’s see towards the WHO meeting. How do you implement a unique health framework in the prevention of pandemic?
VORA: We know that most new infectious diseases are caused by pathogens that originate in animals and then jump to people; We call that process spill. And indirect effects are increasing due to human activities, particularly deforestation, wildlife trade and insecure practices when raising farm animals. Climate change is in the context of all this. When we advance in Aos’s thesis activities, we can reduce the risk of emergency of the pathogen in the first place.
In the next negotiation of the WHO pandemic, there are two articles that focus on the prevention of pandemic and health. If this agreement is adopted, the first binding international agreement on health would represent. And this will open for much more collaboration throughout the world so that people, animals and nature are healthier.
Q: What will success be like?
VORA: We live in an interconnected world. Sometimes it is convenient to think that we can isolate ourselves from what happens around us. But in today’s world, a threat to health anywhere is a threat to health everywhere. In a matter of hours, a person with a new infectious disease can travel to the other side of the planet that carries that infectious disease with them.
That is the importance of this pandemic agreement: try to correct global governance around public health threats. Some of the gaps identified very clearly the Covid pandemic, and we have not yet overlooked them. But the world is quickly changing at this time. We face threats to multilatery and global cooperation. If this agreement is adopted, it will also be a sign that multilatery can still persist. And it will be a will to a global community of people who work together to create a better world.
Max Marcovitch is a senior writer at Conservation International. Why read more stories like this? Register to obtain updates by email. In addition, please support our critical work.
