Posted on 03/24/2006 10:47:46 PM PST by neverdem
ATLANTA, March 24 — Stronger ties between veterinarians and physicians are needed to prevent further outbreaks of the animal diseases that have caused deaths and serious illness among humans in many countries in recent years, international health officials said at a meeting here.
The diseases are known as zoonoses because they affect animals primarily, and humans only incidentally. The AIDS, SARS and A(H5N1) avian influenza viruses and at least eight other infectious agents carried by animals have led to new and emerging human diseases in recent years.
The spread of new and emerging diseases can be a two-way street as people occasionally transmit human diseases like tuberculosis to elephants in captivity in the United States and Sweden and mongooses in Africa.
The latest and most visible zoonosis is A(H5N1) avian influenza. Through illness and culling, the virus has led to the death of an estimated 200 million birds worldwide. In Asia and Europe, the virus has caused 185 human cases of which 104 have been fatal.
New diseases are occurring in part because of globalization and because people are encroaching on areas once reserved for wildlife. After the AIDS virus infected tens of millions of people worldwide and an animal disease, anthrax, was deliberately spread through the United States postal system after Sept. 11, public health has become intertwined with national security.
Experts at the three-day International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses said they had no way of predicting what human disease would emerge next from an animal source.
Preventing further outbreaks, participants said, will require a variety of measures, including more education about zoonoses among veterinarians and physicians; more integration of animal diseases into health plans; the creation of more laboratories to detect animal diseases; and possibly changes in the foods people eat and the animals they keep as pets.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
One might be removing the "it's ok to have sex with animals" clause from Islamic scripture.
One thing I don't want to know to much about is exactly how AIDs got transmitted from monkeys to humans.
Consumption of "bushmeat" is a plausible explanation, even if it can't be documented.
What's "bushmeat"? Oh, nevermind!
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