In 21st century changing in infectious diseases is becoming a great danger for humankind and from last few decades these diseases are transmitting between humans and animals; the flu originated from pig and birds, tuberculosis originated from cattle and Ebola originated from chimpanzees or monkeys. Over 70% infectious diseases are originate from wildlife and now “Zoonotic viruses”, which jump from animals to humans are becoming more common among us and claims millions of deaths every year around the whole world. Biggest fear in transmissions of these diseases is that, old and new pathogens are combining due to climate and landscape changes.
H1N1 flu (The Swine Origin Influenza A) is came to in notice on Feb 2009 in Veracruz with only 1 case and in just five months on 24June 2009, 91 countries were hit by this flu with increase in cases to 55,867. This flu is generally known as virus of pig because pigs are the origin of H1N1 flu; but the question is who is responsible for it, pigs can’t responsible for it.
Actually, intercontinental live pig trading were frequently taking place from past several years and Asian swine were exporting to Mexico, originally H1N1 came from that pigs ; so human activity were behind a origin of deadly disease or we can say it “Animal Trafficking” . More than half a million people died due to H1N1 flu and that was 15times more than expected by WHO.
Like H1N1 flu, Ebola were come into sight in 2014 and spreading by humans. According to virologist Robert Garry from Tulane University a healer were treating patients from across border in Guinea, after her death her patients attended her funeral and they helped to ready coffin, it resulted as 14 people became infected. Blood report of 12 out of that 14 people were clarifying that Ebola had been outbreak. According to a researcher of Journal Science Report, four out of six species of Ebola virus caused diseases in human and RESTV was first detect on October 1989 in Reston, Virginia (USA) in a colony of monkeys , which were imported from Philippines. Again wildlife trafficking produced a deadly virus and humans are not giving attention towards it.
“We need to rethink the way we interact with the natural world” said by Somira Mubareka, a microbiologist and infectious diseases physician at Sunnybrook hospital, Toronto. Somira is trying to question all the people of world that what are we doing? and why? Just for some money or royalty but the truth is we are deflowering the nature, we are not the owner of this nature and animals are not commodity. We are inviting our own death by these activities and that is the most disgusting action of us.
Wildlife trafficking is going so high in 21st century as Brazil based Institute of Environments and Natural Resources gives information that 12 millions wild animals poached each year. The reason why all this happening is because many countries are making a huge profit by these types of markets, China is one of wildlife trade hotspot where live markets are very famous even after knowing that Wuhan live market is somewhere responsible for novel corona virus.
According to US State department wildlife trafficking is the 3rd richest illicit commerce after drugs and weapons, every year this business is generating almost 10billion dollars. It is proof that money is overtaking humanity and wildlife trafficking is producing more and more dangerous diseases over a period of time.
Now a days novel corona virus is making a outcry around the world; but corona viruses are not new, it is common in camels, cattle and bats. Timothy sheahan (epidemiologist at university of north Carolina) says –“SARS was really the first human corona virus to cause several disease”, SARS was came in 2003 yet we did not stop harming the nature and now we are lockdown ourselves in sake of safety.
Novel corona virus didn’t break the system, corona virus exposed a broken system. This is the result of our past mistakes, even WHO EMRO states that 60% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonoes. In just last three decades, over 30 news pathogens have been found and 75% of them have originated in animals due to animal trafficking.
The world needs our attention as well as we need this world but our materialistic mindset is creating problems, we have to take pre indicators more seriously for making this world a better place to live.
