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In 2018, epidemiologists at the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of an unknown “disease x” caused by a virus of animal origin that appears somewhere on the planet where economic development brings people and wildlife together. Experts described that a virus spreads rapidly, travels to many countries through global travel chains, and for which there were no adequate preventive or therapeutic options; It is also a virus that has a higher death rate than the flu and will shake financial markets.
Despite this warning, the world has been stunned by Covid-19.
The virus has colonized humans as a new host. It is not uncommon. More than half of all known disease-causing pathogens in humans are so-called zoonotic pathogens, which are mutually transferable between animals and humans. The origin of the Spanish flu from 1918 is also suspected in an American pigsty, contrary to its name.
Experts predict that such pandemics will occur more frequently in the future and will break out at shorter intervals. The megatrends of our time (globalization, urbanization, declining biodiversity, population growth, and climate change) are promoting these infectious diseases. Humans are increasingly penetrating virgin nature. Habitats are shrinking due to drought and floods or because forests are being cleared for agricultural production areas and dams are being built. At the same time, we are making the world smaller by air transport and our global freight traffic. We operate in the global village – this also paves the way for highly infectious viruses. Virologists speak of 40 other zoonotic viruses with a pandemic potential of Sars-CoV-2.
Rainer Jensen / DPA
Gerd Müller He was born in 1955 in the Swiss city of Krumbach. CSU politician has been since 2013 Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development.
For the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, the issue of zoonoses is therefore on the development policy agenda. Together with the International Animal Research Institute ILRI, we have just launched a first “One Health” center in Nairobi. The “One Health” approach aims to achieve optimal health for people, animals and our environment by bringing together the skills of experts in animal health, agriculture and human medicine.
In the countries of the East African Community, these disciplines are already working together with the skills that we have developed and that we can now benefit from. But in order for “One Health” not only to remain a political phrase, we also have to get out of political and academic thinking globally. A four-pillar integrated health concept is needed to reduce the likelihood of pandemics like Covid-19 in the future.
Humans and animals often live under one roof, ideal transmission conditions for zoonotic agents.
The first priority is the expansion of the public health system with health professionals, basic health education in schools, access to vaccines, diagnoses and therapies, for outpatients and hospitalized patients, for wide sectors of the population. Diseases always mean individual human suffering, but the economic impact is also enormous: in Kenya, the Rift Valley fever in 2006 cost each family an average of $ 500. Overall, one third of the national gross domestic product was lost from the country. The consequences of the Ebola outbreak in the West African states were even more dramatic between 2013 and 2016. In Liberia, economic growth plummeted from 8.7 percent to 0.7 percent. Growth almost stopped in Guinea. The total economic and social cost of the Ebola epidemic is estimated at $ 53 billion.
The second pillar is the expansion of the public veterinary system. More than half of the world population lives in the country; More than 80 percent of farmers in development cooperation partner countries keep farm animals. Humans and animals often live in close contact under one roof; Animal husbandry and milk and meat production are carried out under often poor hygienic conditions, ideal transmission conditions for zoonotic agents. Epidemic hygiene, vaccines and the restrictive use of antibiotics are necessary to keep livestock healthy. And we need constant sacrifice and food hygiene throughout the entire production chain. We are already taking the first steps as part of our cooperation with ILRI in Nairobi.
Third, we must sustainably improve the nutritional status of the population, effectively combat malnutrition and malnutrition, and ensure high-quality protein-rich foods, especially for pregnant women and children, in order to increase resistance to infection . It would also be important to ban wildlife markets. Researchers have identified “wet markets” in Africa and Southeast Asia as breeding grounds for new zoonoses. Under mainly disastrous hygiene and breeding conditions, not only live animals are sold, but also large quantities of “bush meat”, meat of wild animals from the rain forests. This direct contact in the markets, especially the consumption of animals, exposes people to an incalculably high risk of infection with unknown or new zoonotic pathogens that only arise in these constellations through mutations. The first SARS epidemic of 2002, Ebola, now Covid-19, likely originated here.
This health architecture must be managed and coordinated worldwide.
After all, it is about giving people access to clean drinking water and proper disposal of wastewater. Both are crucial factors in ensuring healthy nutrition and hygiene. We have been working with German municipalities and medium-sized companies for years to build waste and water cycle economies in developing countries. You must also learn how to handle wastewater from animal husbandry with care, from the pharmaceutical industry, especially the manufacture of antibiotics. These culverts are huge, uncontrollable bioreactors that pose a massive health risk from multidrug-resistant germs.
This health architecture must be managed and coordinated worldwide: multilateral actors must work together: the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, the World Food Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and the Global Fund Against AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis (GFATM) with the GAVI Vaccine Alliance. Because we have to wait for more pandemics, we should expand WHO to a global pandemic center: with targeted monitoring of the location of outbreaks of infection and progress, a global reporting system, and international research partnerships with China and Africa, which have similar results to tsunami and climate research. network As we will have to reorganize our global financial structures anyway, the proceeds from a financial transaction tax or a digital tax would be well spent.
It is crucial for us in Germany that the development and health ministries work hand in hand. We are well prepared with the new approach “One Health”.
