Destroyed natural habitats create perfect conditions for the emergence of coronaviruses. COVID-19 could only be the beginning of the era of global pandemics.

Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. In the depths of the great Minkebe forest north of Gabon, on the south bank of the Ivindo River, this place is home to 150 or more people; It is known as the starting point of malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping diseases. All these diseases have been fought somehow. But when the dates show in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus that was later known to humans at the time, unexpectedly came out of the forest in a small wave of epidemics. The disease ended the lives of 21 of 37 peasants who were reported to be sick while hunting and eating chimpanzees from the nearby forest and carrying their skins. In 2004, I organized a trip to the Mayibout 2 region to examine how all these deadly diseases were transmitted to people from the high biodiversity markets of rainforest products and wild animal meat in African and Asian cities. My trip by canoe lasted a day. I passed through Baka villages and small gold mines to reach this village in the forest. When I got there, I found the public traumatized by fear of the return of this virus, which killed 90 percent of the people it was infected with.

The villagers told me that the children went to the forest with dogs and killed a chimpanzee, and those who cooked it and ate it quickly fell into a high fire, and most of them died immediately, and the rest were taken to the hospital down the Ebola river. Unfortunately, few have recovered, like Nesto Bematsick. Nesto told me we used to love forests, now it's a source of fear for us. Nesto lost many of his relatives due to this virus.

Until about twenty years ago, it was thought that viruses and microbes such as Ebola, HIV, dengue fever, which are found in tropical forests and exotic wildlife, could cause new diseases that threaten humans.

Many researchers think that COVID-19, a new viral disease that was seen in China in December 2019 and had huge impacts on the health and economy of many poor or wealthy countries, is actually the result of the damage that humanity has done to biodiversity in nature. Increasing epidemics have given rise to the field of "planetary health", a new scientific discipline that focuses on the connections of the well-being of human life with other living things and the entire ecosystem.

Could outbreaks such as the Mayibout 2 region in 1990 and the Ebola epidemic in many places, as a result of humanity's activities such as road construction, mining, hunting, deforestation, really be a new type of terror today?

David Quammen, author of the book "Spillover: Animal-borne infections and the next epidemic," states in his article in The New York Times that humanity is now invading tropical forests and wildlife, which host many species, animals, plants and unknown viruses. He says we are destabilizing the ecosystem by cutting down trees, killing animals, or taking them to markets with cages, and viruses living in these environments have to find new hosts like humans.

Increased danger

Studies show that the number of diseases such as animal-borne outbreaks, Ebola, SARS, Avian flu, and now COVID-19 is on the rise. Microbes that pass from animals to humans can now spread everywhere in a very short time. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of the "new or emerging" diseases transmitted to humans are caused by animals.

While some diseases such as rabies and plague passed from animals to humans centuries ago, Marburg, which is transmitted from bats to humans and has a low incidence; COVID-19, which emerged in the Wuhan region of China in December 2019; Transmitted from camels to humans in the Middle East, MERS creates new and globally rapidly spreading epidemics for humanity.

However, when we look at other diseases transmitted from animals to humans, we can count Lassa fever in Nigeria in 1969, Nipah in Malaysia, and SARS in 30 countries that occurred in China between 2002-2003 and caused the death of more than 700 people. Zika and West Nile virus, which emerged in Africa, mutated and seen in other countries, also caused epidemics known in the recent past.

Kate Jones, head of the ecology and biodiversity department at the University of College London; He emphasizes that animal-borne outbreaks are a growing threat to global health, safety and economies.

Increased impact

In 2008, Kate Jones and her team determined that 60% of the 335 diseases they detected between 1960 and 2004 were animal-borne.

Kate Jones stated that animal-borne diseases are linked to environmental changes and human behavior, while rapidly developing urbanization, mining, road construction that destroyed forests

We cannot predict where the next outbreak will come from, so we need epidemic reduction plans to take into account the worst possible scenarios. The only certainty is that the next epidemic will definitely come.