EID's such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise. The study has determined that zoonoses, diseases that originate in animals, are the current and most important threat in causing new diseases to emerge. The study analysed 335 incidents of previous disease emergence beginning in 1940 and concluded that most of these EID's originated in wildlife.
The team, including University of Georgia professor John Gittleman and scientists from the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the Institute of Zoology (London) and Columbia University recently published their findings in the journal Nature.
The researchers found that 60 percent of EID events were caused by animal sources and about 71 percent of these outbreaks were caused by pathogens with a wildlife source. For instance, the emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia and the Sars outbreak in China are linked to wild.
The researchers also warned that there has been a rise in the number of events that originated from wild animals. "This supports the suggestion that zoonotic EIDs represents an increasing and very significant threat to global health," the paper's authors wrote.
The scientists also found that more new diseases emerged in the 1980s than any other decade. With data corrected for lesser surveillance done in poorer countries, "hot spots" (diseases prominent areas) jump out in areas spanning sub-Saharan Africa, India and China; smaller spots appear in Europe, and North and South America.
