A team of 25 international scientists has proposed a strategy to prevent future pandemics by conserving natural habitats and promoting biodiversity. The plan seeks to ensure sufficient food and space for the disease-harbouring animals to limit contact and transfer of pathogens to humans.
“The world is focused on how can we detect and then contain a novel pathogen once it is circulating in humans, rather than how can we prevent that pathogen from entering the human population in the first place,” says Raina Plowright, Professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, and first author of the paper ‘Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics’. The paper was published in Nature Communications recently.
Reducing the risk of pandemics needs steps in prevention, preparedness and response. When preparedness and response get focus, the prevention, especially the prevention of zoonotic spillover, has been neglected. The scientists elucidate the mechanism linking environmental change and zoonotic spillover using spillover of viruses from bats as a case study.
