A new study from the University of Sydney, Australia, carried out in partnership with scientists from the United Kingdom, India and Ethiopia, sought to find out which cities worldwide are most at risk of generating new pandemics, and the findings reveal that the Most are located in South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the Times Live continues.
More specifically, according to the survey, the cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, all located in South Africa, are among the global cities at high risk of generating the next pandemic, according to a new study.
The survey looks at cities with a high level of contact between animals and humans, combined with poor health and a high global connection. Lead author Michael Walsh said that about 40% of the world’s most connected cities have areas where human pressure on wildlife is high.
Between 14% and 20% of the largest cities in the world at risk for diseases that pass from animals to humans are unlikely to be able to detect new diseases due to poor health infrastructure, Walsh said.
“Emerging infections that lead to epidemics or substantive pandemics are usually between animals and humans and cross the borders of species at vulnerable points in the human-animal interface”, says the expert in the article published in One Health and published in the magazine Galileu.
The article also reveals: “The sharing of space between wildlife, humans, and their domestic animals, has increased dramatically in recent decades and is one of the main drivers of the increase in viral infections”.
“The increase in the human-animal interface has also occurred in conjunction with growing globalization and poor health systems, resulting in a scenario with dire implications for human and animal health,” adds the document. “Places where outbreaks are not identified can lead to worldwide spread and new pandemics,” said Walsh, a member of the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosafety.
Walsh considers that although the poorest countries have most cities in areas classified as at greatest risk for infectious transmission and subsequent global spread, the high risk in these areas is a consequence of the deficiency of health systems.
Although they are not widely represented in the high-risk zone because they have better health infrastructure, wealthier countries still have many cities at risk of generating pandemics because of the extreme pressures they exert on wildlife through unsustainable development.
The main measures needed to curb this situation include conservation efforts to limit wildlife encounters with humans and their domestic animals, enhanced animal surveillance and human health infrastructure to detect possible transmissions.
“With this new information, people can develop systems that incorporate human health infrastructure, animal husbandry, conservation of wildlife habitat and movement through transportation centers to prevent the next pandemic”, concludes the author.
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