Animal-Related Diseases on the Rise: An issue that concerns both wildlife conservation and human health

By Jill Claroni

“Human health, wildlife health and domestic animal health are all interconnected within the context of the environment. And changes in environmental quality will have negative impacts in all 3 groups." - Sleeman

Zulima Palacio of Washington published an article titled “Animal-Related Diseases Concern Scientists on January 4, 2012.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/health/Animal-Related-Diseases-Raise-Concern-with-Scientists-136677768.html

In his article, he talks about how the number of infectious diseases spread from animals to humans has been increasing. Scientists believe the increase may be a result of more frequent contact between humans and wild animals, as well as the growing trade in wild animals, both legal and illegal. Towards the end of the 1990s, several Asian countries were faced new, highly pathogenic, strain of Avian Influenza known as H5N1, which killed hundreds of people. As a result, more than 9-million chickens were destroyed in an effort to stop the epidemic. Scientists believe the H5N1 virus was transmitted from wild birds to domestic poultry and pigs, which then passed it to humans. H5N1 is the latest variety of the influenza strain that has killed up to 100 million people over the last century.

The concern of pathogens spreading from animals to humans is not a new problem. The AIDS virus, HIV, is now known to have originated from a similar virus in African chimpanzees. An estimated 30-million people have died of AIDS since the early 1980s. Other human diseases with animal origins include SARS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever and West Nile encephalitis.

With a rise in trade, exotic animals are more likely to escape or be released into local ecosystems. These animals will often disrupt native ecologies, out-compete native species and potentially spread new diseases. Therefore, more attention must be paid to the human disruption of wildlife and ecosystems to avoid the emergence of other infectious diseases with deeper and even more severe consequences.

I agree that more attention should be placed on how humans interact with wildlife considering the rise of infectious diseases. This reminds me of the Black Death unit, since this epidemic was spread due to the fleas on rodents. The reason it swept through Asia and Europe was by trade, just as diseases are spread today. A modern example of this would be AIDs, since it originated from African monkeys and being highly contagious, has continued to spread. I think this article was very informative in that this is a serious problem that not enough people seem to be educated about. Epidemic Diseases could be controlled better if people were more cautious when interacting with animals since this is an issue of human health and wildlife conservation.