The risks of the next pandemic are increasing

More and more people are looking for more and more raw materials. That means less room for bats – which spread many types of viruses. The danger is constantly growing of the next pandemic, as wild animals and humans compete for a place to live.

Bats are carriers of tens of thousands of viruses, and they spread them to humans if the right conditions are in place. These conditions were very small as long as the bats had large forests to live in undisturbed, such as the Amazon or in West Africa.

The problem is that man who in his search for raw materials and living space for a larger population opens up these forests with roads, mines and other developments and thus gets close to bats and viruses, Reuters reports.

Viruses spread more easily

In fact, these areas are now found in 113 countries across all continents except Antarctica, and a fifth of the world’s population now lives in areas where viruses can easily pass from bats to humans and then spread through the next pandemic.

At the same time that deforestation of forests continues and even if people do not eat bats directly, which they also sometimes do, the virus can be transmitted, for example, through water contaminated with animal feces, which people then drink.

So the Marburg virus recently broke out in West Africa, a virus with a fatality rate of 90 percent, while Ebola has also seen new outbreaks.

High level discussions

The question scientists ask is not whether the next pandemic will come, but when and where it will start. In an effort to prevent this, some companies and governments have begun discussing the issue at a high level.

The mineral-rich countries of West Africa know that it is not a good idea to deal with a new pandemic caused by their devastated forests.

“Things like this scare investors away from the country,” says Liberia’s finance minister. Samuel Toya.

It also includes how to design the means of a mining process Gesler Murray Inside the Ministry of Energy and Minerals of Liberia.

“We need to revise our standard mining practices to include a very robust disease risk assessment,” he says, adding:

“It is becoming more and more necessary.”

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