The UAE has ideas to save the world from the next pandemic

The UAE has ideas to save the world from the next pandemic

The rapid spread and rise of zoonotic diseases like Covid-19 and monkeypox should ring global alarm bells about the state of the environment and the extent to which humans are destroying or encroaching into animal habitats in their quest for development and economic growth.

Deforestation should concern people and industry, and unless forests and fauna are preserved, we face not just an environmental but also a viral catastrophe where new pathogens cause havoc on human populations. People and wild beasts in close proximity have opened new pathways for new pathogens that are constantly changing form and virality to cause much damage to lives and the larger economy as witnessed by Covid lockdowns and the millions of lives lost.

At last count, the coronavirus causing Covid-19 has claimed 6.36 million innocent lives while infecting 555 million around the world. Some diseases that were lying dormant for many decades, like monkeypox, have reappeared and cases are being reported across the world. Let’s set the record straight here: People have wandered or have wantonly destroyed natural animal terrain for the development of their own.

In doing so, they may have invoked the wrath of other living beings they share the world with. So are these zoonotic