A brand-new research study recommends pandemic prevention needs a global consensus to leave bats and their environments undisturbed, as they are reservoirs for many infections that can contaminate human beings. They highlight the cost-effectiveness of changing human habits toward bats and emphasize ecosystem services bats provide like controlling damaging pests and pollinating crops.
A current paper in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health supporters for a universal contract to prevent disturbing bats and their environments as a step to avoid pandemics.
Bats have been determined as the source of the infection in both the SARS coronavirus outbreak of 2003 and the COVID-19 pandemic. It remains unpredictable whether the transmission arised from direct contact with an infected bat, exposure to bat physical fluids in a cave or comparable environment, or via another animal contaminated by a bat, we will quite likely never know.
Even a virus released via a laboratory accident would still have actually originally come from a bat. However we do not require to understand all of the details in order to act.
Bats are understood to be reservoirs for a vast array of infections that can infect other species, including individuals. They provide rabies, Marburg filoviruses, Hendra and Nipah paramyxoviruses, coronaviruses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus, and fruit bats are strongly believed to be a source of Ebolaviruses.
Pandemic avoidance requires a worldwide taboo where humankind accepts leave bats alone– to let them have the habitats they need, undisturbed. Credit: Clement Kolopp
A brand-new analysis points to the value of an international taboo where humankind consents to leave bats alone– not fear them or try to chase them away or choose them (activities that only serve to distribute them and increase the chances of zoonotic spillover)– but to let them have the environments they require and live undisturbed.
If an ounce of prevention is undoubtedly worth a pound of cure, then the authors emphasize that humanity just must take the most standard, sensible upstream actions to lower our risk of sustaining another pandemic– at the user interface where harmful infections can in fact move from animals into individuals.
” In a globalized world with 8 billion individuals, we can no longer ignore our interconnectedness with the wildlife and ecosystems around us. We need to change humanitys relationship with nature if we wish to prevent the next pandemic of zoonotic origin– and that can start with bats,” states Dr. Susan Lieberman, WCSs Vice President for International Policy.
Merely put, mankind must change its damaged relationship with nature, specifically wildlife and bats in specific. The expenses of executing the human behavioral changes we need are unimportant compared to the expenses of another global pandemic (which could be a lot more destructive).
” Getting humanity to work collaboratively at a global scale underpins most of the existential difficulties we deal with, from climate modification and environmental pollution to biodiversity loss and community collapse– this at a time when earnest cooperation even at local scales typically appears evasive,” notes Cornell Professor of Wildlife Health & & Health Policy Steven A. Osofsky, lead author of the study. “However, if we can really stop hunting, eating, and trading bats, stay out of their caves, keep animals away from locations where bats are concentrated, and if we can stop deforesting, degrading (or perhaps begin restoring) their natural environments, we can indisputably lower the opportunities of another pandemic.”
The authors highlight that enabling bats to thrive and make it through will also pay billions of dollars in dividends in the type of the ecosystem services that bats provide, such as control of mosquitos and other damaging insects, along with pollination of a wide variety of important crops. They conclude that humanitys relationships with other kinds of animals undoubtedly warrant close scrutiny, but respecting bats and the environments they require is genuinely the most affordable hanging fruit of authentic upstream pandemic prevention– an essential better-late-than-never message now that weve passed the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recommendation: “An instant method to lower pandemic threat: (not) seizing the low-hanging fruit (bat)” by Steven A Osofsky, Susan Lieberman, Christian Walzer, Helen L Lee and Laurel A Neme, 5 June 2023, The Lancet Planetary Health.DOI: 10.1016/ S2542-5196( 23 )00077-3.