Two experts in the field of prevention and immunity present to “Sky News Arabia” their opinion on the validity of what is reported that the home of the new epidemic will be the forests in Brazil, in particular the caves of bats. mice, and the possibility of it turning into a “global epidemic”.
Last Monday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged member states to prepare for any future outbreaks, as well as to increase funding for the organization, saying: “We cannot not postpone this,” and warned that the next outbreak is likely to “happen soon.”
He continued, “If we don’t implement the necessary changes, who will? And if we don’t implement them now, when?”
Bat infection
Adviser to the Egyptian Center for the Right to Medicine in Cairo, Mohamed Ezz Al-Arab, now attributes the WHO warning to its efforts to prepare international coordination to tackle any future epidemics that “may overtake the world. in a short period of time”.
Among these preparations are preparing laboratories, raising funds, and studying the lifestyle of virus-carrying animals, especially reptiles and bats. Based on this, he developed complete confrontation scenarios, as explained by Ezz Al-Arab.
Forest aggression
Ahmed Salman, a professor of immunology at the University of Oxford, England, and a member of the AstraZeneca vaccine development team, links the possibility of a new outbreak to “abnormal relationships with nature”.
Photos of this transaction:
human desertification of forests; This exposes their animals and makes humans more likely to interact with virus-carrying species. Deforestation reduces the presence of insects and organisms on which bats feed. When humans settle in deforested places, there will be direct relationships with bats which feed on the blood of humans, animals and fruit, and leave their droppings on the fruit that humans eat. Bat cells carry viruses capable of growing and infecting humans.
Why Brazil?
Scientists say the next pandemic in the world could start from a cave in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, which is supported by Ezz Al-Arab and Salman, and they have attributed this to:
Brazil has the third-largest number of bat species in the world and has large land areas that increase the risk of infection from bats to humans. Some caves in Brazil are more than 1.5 km deep and are home to thousands of bats. Some of the world’s deadliest viruses have emerged from bats. Deforestation stresses bats, and stressed bats can carry more viruses, shedding more germs in their saliva, urine, and droppings. Additionally, human activity in tree cutting and proximity to bat caves raise the possibility of direct contact and transmission of infection. A “viral mutation” can occur inside bats and then it is transmitted to humans, as happened previously in “Covid 19”. No one is immune to these viruses, and if the infection comes directly from animals such as bats, it spreads easily and an epidemic occurs.
Therefore, the two experts stress that the warnings of the World Health Organization are “very important”, and that the countries of the world must now prepare for them.
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