[TimeStar] Animal-to-human diseases forecast to accelerate

[TimeStar]

Rapidly growing disease and mutations was one form novelty could take the
TimeStar considered for this year.  This article dated May 5 indicates a
trend of accelerating animal-to-human diseases.  Krsanna

http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040505183905.yg05f85h.html

INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS WARN OF ACCELERATION IN ANIMAL-TO-HUMAN DISEASE

GENEVA (AFP) May 05, 2004
International experts warned Wednesday that the emergence of new diseases
that are passed from animals to humans, such as avian flu, was accelerating
and they were ill-equipped to counter the trend.

Their conclusions came at the end of a three-day meeting of scientists
dealing with animal and human health at the World Health Organisation, which
examined the diseases that can jump the species barrier, known as zoonoses.

"Their current upward trend is likely to continue," Francois-Xavier Meslin
of the WHO told journalists.

"The number of zoonotic diseases is very large and those that emerge as
public health problems in both the developed and developing world are
increasing continuously," Meslin, a specialist on zoonoses, said.

The scientists warned that there was a lack of cooperation between animal
and human health sectors that hampered efforts to prevent new diseases
emerging in humans.

"We are not yet able to tell you when and where the next emerging zoonosis
agent will crop up," Meslin said.

They also urged governments to take action to strengthen basic surveillance,
research and treatment facilities throughout the world.

WHO, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World
Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) were issuing a "joint message" to
"raise political awareness and support" for underfunded veterinary and
public health services, Meslin said.

Asia was hit by widespread outbreaks of bird flu at the end of 2003 and
earlier this year, which led to the deaths of at least 23 people in Vietnam
and Thailand.

Millions of chickens and ducks were also culled in a bid to halt the spread
of the disease, which has only started to infect humans in a virulent form
in recent years.

Zoonoses include diseases that are passed on by contact between animals and
humans, such as bird flu, ebola, or mosquito-borne parasitic diseases like
leishmaniasis.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS -- which affected large parts of
Asia last year -- is regarded as a "potential" zoonosis because scientists
have not yet been able to confirm that it emerged from civet cats or market
animals in southern China.

Human behaviour was a key factor driving the emergence of the diseases, the
scientists said in a statement which listed pet ownership, global air
travel, "food preference" and poverty.

But they also highlighted environmental factors such as climate change and
farming practices.

European scientists told meeting that they were expecting the West Nile
virus, a mosquito-borne viral infection that can cause fatal inflammation of
the brain, to emerge in Europe soon because of warmer weather patterns.

The virus's natural hosts are believed to be migrating birds, and several
people died from the disease in the United States after it emerged there for
the first time in recent years.

Nipah virus, which induces flu-like symptoms that often lead to encephalitis
and a coma, jumped the species barrier from fruit bats to pigs and then to
humans in a deadly outbreak in Malaysia in October 1998.

Twenty-five of 29 people thought to have contracted the illness have died of
Nipah in an outbreak in Bangladesh this year, according to US health
authorities.

Meslin said mad cow disease, which is believed to be passed on to humans in
one form through eating infected meat, was only a peripheral subject during
the meeting.




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