On the same day SA finally shed the last of its Covid regulations, the first monkeypox case was announced in the country, and by Monday, a third case was confirmed by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
The symbolism of this emergence of monkeypox so hot on the heels of Covid in many countries is not lost on scientists and environmentalists, whose message is clear: unless we change the way we interact with animals and the environment, we are going to see one zoonotic disease after another.
Zoonotic diseases are not a new phenomenon and date back thousands of years, but the frequency of their emergence in the contemporary world is a real cause for alarm.
Prof Wanda Markotter, who leads the Centre for Viral Zoonoses at the University of Pretoria, told TimesLIVE Premium: “If you don’t address these problems collectively, you are going to see more and more spillover of disease from animals to humans.”
She said the health of humans, animals and ecosystems is interlinked, and a “complete shift in mindset” is needed to prevent a frequent emergence of zoonotic diseases.
Prevention is key because “the world does not have the resources to keep fighting pandemics in the way we fought Covid”, she said, adding that in the hands of humanity, biodiversity has waned, land use has changed, agriculture has expanded into new areas causing increased contact with wildlife, and the climate has changed.
While the consumption of bushmeat and the existence of wet markets are often blamed, the problem is far larger and complex.
Examples include that climate change has expanded the range of disease-carrying animals such as ticks and fleas, while human encroachment on animals’ habitat disturbs the ecosystem and pushes animals into other areas or increases contact in the existing area.
Because of all this, zoonotic diseases are proliferating at a higher rate than ever before and the only way to change them is to change our relationship with animals and the environment.
The World Economic Forum points out that about 60% of known infectious diseases and 75% of all new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in nature.
Markotter was recently appointed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as co-chair of One Health, an expert panel that will address diseases in humans holistically in the context of environments.
Already many zoonotic diseases are known by name to lay people across the globe — Aids, Lyme Disease, Ebola, Zika and Dengue fever, to name but a few
Much hope is pinned on One Health, but some scientists believe any mitigation efforts are too little too late.
According to David Morens, a zoonotic disease expert at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, pessimism is the order of the day among those in the know.
He was recently quoted in National Geographic as saying: “Almost all the experts I know think this will keep happening again and again because the problem is not the germs, the problem is our behaviour.”
Long before Covid emerged and ripped through populations globally, Morens had started asking — and answering — the right questions.
In a paper of which he was the lead author, published in The Lancet, Morens wrote: “Common and interactive co-determinants of disease emergence, including population growth, travel and environmental disruption, have been increasingly documented and studied. Are emerging infections a new phenomenon related to modern life, or do more basic determinants, transcending time, place and human progress, govern disease generation?”
He and fellow researchers concluded that notable epidemics had occurred throughout recorded history, but that “an increasingly complex modern world” will create more opportunities for diseases to emerge, which will “challenge human survival”.
Already many zoonotic diseases are known by name to lay people across the globe — Aids, Lyme Disease, Ebola, Zika and Dengue fever, to name but a few.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “some 2.5-billion people are infected with zoonotic diseases each year, and because many of these ailments have no cure, they kill about 2.7-million annually”.
Covid alone has killed at least 6.34-million people, though the number is likely to be far higher, and at least 555-million are thought to have been infected, though again the number is likely to be much higher.
The past two years have also seen the proliferation of fake news, conspiracy theories and denialism.
Infectious diseases are emerging globally at an unprecedented rate, while global food demand is projected to increase sharply by 2100
— Researcher Jason Rohr
Like zoonotic diseases themselves, such paradigms are not new to the human race.
When the bubonic plague struck in 1345 and ultimately killed more than 50-million people, even top-class researchers, with their highly limited understanding of science, got it wrong.
Scholars at the University of Paris pronounced that the plague resulted from “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars” all sitting “in the 40th degree of Aquarius” at the same time.
Today, the bright glare of science and the reality of our future are far more concerning than planets being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
According to a paper published in Nature (just before Covid-19 struck) and led by the University of Notre Dame in the US, our food systems are at the heart of it, and with a growing number of mouths to feed, it is only going to get worse.
“Infectious diseases are emerging globally at an unprecedented rate, while global food demand is projected to increase sharply by 2100,” according to lead researcher Jason Rohr.
“Feeding 11-billion people will require substantial increases in crop and animal production that will expand agricultural use of antibiotics, water, pesticides and fertiliser, and contact rates between humans and both wild and domestic animals, all with consequences for the emergence and spread of infectious agents.”
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