Forewarned is forearmed 07 October 2008 | News - News story Health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) released a report that lists 12 pathogens that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, at the IUCN World Conservation Congress today. All have potential impacts to human and wildlife health, as well as global economies.
The new report The Deadly Dozen: Wildlife Diseases in the Age of Climate Change provides examples of diseases that could spread as a result of changes in temperature and rainfall.
The best defence, according to the reports authors, is a good offence in the form of wildlife monitoring to detect how these diseases are moving. Health professionals can then start to prepare. The monitoring of wildlife health provides us with a sensitive and quantitative means of detecting changes in the environment, said Dr. William Karesh, Vice President and Director of WCSs Global Health Programs and Co-Chair of IUCNs Wildlife Health Specialist Group.
Wildlife health monitoring provides a new lens to see what is changing around us and will help governments, agencies, and communities detect and mitigate threats before they become disasters. The term climate change conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens, said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, WCS President and CEO.
The health of wild animals is tightly linked to the ecosystems in which they live and influenced by the environment surrounding them, and even minor disturbances can have far-reaching consequences on what diseases they might encounter and transmit as climate changes. Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots will occur and plan how to prepare. The Deadly Dozen including such diseases as avian influenza, Ebola, cholera, and tuberculosis is illustrative only of the broad range of infectious diseases that threaten humans and animals.
No comments:
Post a Comment