A more coordinated effort by scientists, stakeholders and community members will be required to stop the next deadly virus that’s already circulating in our midst.
Eating less animal proteins may help reduce the risk of future zoonotic viruses.
(AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
Pandemic viruses arise from raising, harvesting and eating animals. Policy strategy for averting the next pandemic should include supporting those already seeking to make plant-based dietary changes.
Hundreds of trees have been felled along Nairobi’s Uhuru and Waiyaki highways to make space for a new expressway.
CELINE CLERY/AFP via Getty Images
Nairobi harbours all the ingredients for zoonotic spillover to occur between animals and people, particularly in the most densely populated areas of the city.
Albanian health department workers, wearing protective suits, collect chickens, in the village of Peze Helmes some 20 km from the capital Tirana, 23 March 2006, after the second case of H5N1 bird flu was discovered in Albania.
Gent Shkullaku / AFP
Ever since the 2001 SARS outbreak and H5N1 avian flu in 2003, we’ve developed tools to monitor diseases that transmitted from animals to humans. But what does a large-scale roll-out entail?
Behind the scenes, natural history museums store biological samples from the field.
Ryan Stephens
Specimen preservation means researchers don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time they ask a new question, making it critical for the advancement of science. But many specimens are discarded or lost.
Needed: less wild meat in cities, more wildlife experts in public health.
Rising sea levels are threatening homes on Diamniadio Island, Saloum Delta in Senegal. A child stands outside a home’s former kitchen, surrounded by mangrove branches, in 2015.
(AP Photo/Jane Hahn)
Human encroachment on the environment is increasing the threat of diseases like COVID-19, but spending more time in nature could also be part of the solution to this pandemic.
Specimens like these at Dublin’s Natural History Museum contain valuable information about the evolution of pathogens and host organisms.
Kieran Guckian/Flickr
By identifying the roots of global ills such as climate change and biodiversity, there’s an opportunity for coordinated action as countries lay new pathways for a post-COVID world.
COVID-19 has brought to the fore the interdependency of business and society. It’s time for amendments to the social contract that underlies societal support for business.