Hyderabad: The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and the greatest challenge we have faced since World War Two.
The world has seen many zoonotic diseases-those transferred from animals to humans–in recent decades. Diseases like Ebola, bird flu, swine flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Rift Valley fever, sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, the Zika virus–and now, the novel coronavirus COVID-19, have all either caused or threatened to cause major pandemics, with millions of deaths and billions in economic losses.
The novel coronavirus has created havoc across the world and it is clear that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic. But COVID-19 is much more than a health crisis. By stressing every one of the countries it touches, it has the potential to create devastating social, economic and political crises that will leave deep scars.
A disease that originates in one country can quickly spread to others, regardless of the distances between them.
This is particularly visible in the rapid spread of COVID-19, which affected almost every country in the world within three months of the first reported case.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2016 pointed out that 60 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic and that these zoonotic diseases are closely interlinked with the health of ecosystems.
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We are in uncharted territory. Many of our communities are now unrecognizable. Dozens of the world’s greatest cities are deserted as people stay indoors, either by choice or by government order. Across the world, shops, theatres, restaurants and bars are closing.
Every day, people are losing jobs and income, with no way of knowing when normality will return. Small island nations, heavily dependent on tourism, have empty hotels and deserted beaches. The International Labour Organization estimates that 25 million jobs could be lost.
According to the UNEP Frontiers report, zoonoses are opportunistic and thrive where there are changes in the environment, changes in animal or human hosts, or changes in the pathogen, itself.
In the last century, a combination of population growth and reduction in ecosystems and biodiversity has culminated in unprecedented opportunities for pathogens to pass between animals and people.
On average, one new infectious disease emerges in humans every four months, the report says.
Human activities have resulted in major changes in the environment. They destroy the natural buffer zones that would normally separate humans from animals and create opportunities for pathogens to spill over from wild animals to people.
Rapid climate change is challenging to those with fewer resources for responding quickly, leaving them more vulnerable and amplifying their risk of harm from the spread of zoonotic disease.
Read: COVID-19 slower than flu but more dangerous: WHO
UNEP, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and hundreds of partners across the planet are launching a 10-year effort to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. Known as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, this globally-coordinated response to the loss and degradation of habitats will focus on building political will and capacity to restore humankind’s relationship with nature.
UNEP is also working with world leaders to develop a new and ambitious Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and bringing emerging issues (such as zoonotics) to the attention of decision-makers.
UNEP Executive Director, Inger Andersen has observed that "We are intimately interconnected with nature, whether we like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature, we can’t take care of ourselves."
As the world responds to and recovers from the current pandemic, it will also require all of society to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to cushion the potentially devastating impact it may have on vulnerable people and economies.
The need of the hour is to rebuild trust and cooperation, within and among nations, and between people and their governments in order to defeat the coronavirus.
Also Read: WHO's Guide to help countries expand global access to essential medicines
