Monkeypox spread stokes WHO fears of more zoonotic diseases emerging

With the spread of monkeypox across the world coming hot on the heels of Covid-19, there are fears that increasing outbreaks of diseases that jump from animals to humans could spark another pandemic.

While such diseases — called zoonoses — have been around for millennia, they have become more common in recent decades due to deforestation, mass livestock cultivation, climate change and other human-induced upheavals of the animal world, experts say.

Other diseases to leap from animals to humans include HIV, Ebola, Zika, SARS, MERS, bird flu and the bubonic plague.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that it is still investigating the origins of Covid, but the “strongest evidence is still around zoonotic transmission”.

And with more than 1,000 monkeypox cases recorded globally over the last month, the UN agency has warned there is a “real” risk the disease could become established in dozens of countries.

The WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan said last week that “it’s not just in monkeypox” — the way that humans and animals interact has become “unstable”.

“The number of times that these diseases cross into humans is increasing and then our ability to amplify that disease and move it on within our communities is increasing,” he said.

Monkeypox did not recently leap over to humans — the first human case was identified in DR Congo in 1970 and it has since been confined to areas in Central and Western Africa.

Despite its name, “the latest monkeypox outbreak has nothing to do with monkeys,” said Olivier Restif, epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge.

While it was first discovered in macaques, “zoonotic transmission is most often from rodents, and outbreaks spread by person-to-person contact,”, he told AFP.

Around 60 per cent of all known human infections are zoonotic, as are 75 per cent of all new and emerging infectious diseases, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Restif said the number of zoonotic pathogens and outbreaks have increased in the past few decades due to “population growth, livestock growth and encroachment into wildlife habitats”.

“Wild animals have drastically changed their behaviours in response to human activities, migrating from their depleted habitats,” he said.

Restif said that there is “no silver bullet — our best bet is to act at all levels to reduce the risk”.