Hyderabad: Ever since the nationwide lockdown was enforced to arrest the spread of the deadly coronavirus, it has given rise to another humanitarian crisis, where lakhs of migrant workers are now returning to their home states in the absence of employment opportunities.
Significant migration of humans: Cause of various issues
Our modern day development led to the migration of humans - not only in large numbers, but to very distant places too. Along with the various ecological and economic issues arisen because of this, one of the most disturbing issues has been the abysmal living conditions of migrants. While we are obsessed with the skyline views of cities, it is time we get the ground-line view of the migrant clusters.
Nature manages its biodiversity by physically locating species in colonies with communication done through signalling instead of mass transfer of inhabitants, based on the concept of energy transfer and not mass. If mass transfer takes place beyond a point, nature becomes unhealthy and tries to revert to its natural state. The current reverse migration is probably nature's way of correcting the wrongs.
Significant migration of microbes within human body: Cause of disease
With 90 per cent of microbial cells including bacteria, viruses etc., we are just a shell for the trillions of microbes. Our microbiome is not only helpful but also essential for our survival. It aids in digestion, immunity etc. It may appear to be a chaotic world of trillions of microbes in our bodies, however, nature has created order by colonising different species of microbes in different parts of our bodies, benefiting both the host and the organisms.
For example, in a healthy individual, within the gastrointestinal tract, the small intestine has aerobes and facultative anaerobes whereas the large intestine, has predominantly strict anaerobes. Similarly, in a healthy individual, the pharynx has gram negative bacteria but these are absent in the nasal passage.
Even though in healthy individuals these different types of microbes inhabit their respective locations, they aid in creating various signals which may not only impact the host location cells or organs, but cells and organs at other and distant locations too. For instance, the short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) derived from bacterial fermentation of dietary fibre can enter circulation and signal through their cognate receptors to many organs including the central nervous system, which in turn regulates other tissues.