Coalition Says Healing 'Broken Relationship With Nature' Key to Stopping Next Pandemic

As the World Health Organization stresses the need for continued measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the face of a global rise in cases, reporting out Tuesday spotlights a new coalition warning that another global pandemic will surely come barring investment in measures to address the root causes of zoonotic disease outbreaks.

"The Covid-19 vaccines will help rescue us from this current mess, but it won't do a thing to protect us from the next pandemic," Aaron Bernstein of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told The Guardian.

"Only with actions that stop emerging infections where they start can we end our ill-fated game of Russian roulette with pathogens," he said.

Harvard Chan is part of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source coalition, which brings together a number of public health experts and environmental organizations. Other coalition partners include Harvard's Global Health Institute, EcoHealth Alliance, and Health in Harmony.

As The Guardian reported:

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is thought to have jumped from wild bats to humans and about two-thirds of diseases that infect humans start in other species, including the influenza, HIV, Zika, West Nile, and Ebola viruses. The increasing destruction of nature by farming, logging, and the wild animal trade has brought people and their livestock into closer contact with wildlife and led to a great increase in diseases crossing from animals to people in recent decades.

10 March 2021

EcoWatch