Zoonotic diseases. Rudra🏅🏅

Mains Paper 2,Health & Education

From UPSC perspective, the following points are important :

Mains level : Threats posed by coronavirus outbreak

Several deadly new viruses in recent years have emerged in China — Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), bird flu, and now the novel Coronavirus (nCOV).

Closely packed stalls in busy marketplaces, the Chinese taste for exotic meats, and the high population density of cities create the conditions for the spread of zoonotic infections.

The WHO estimates that globally, about a billion cases of illness and millions of deaths occur every year from zoonoses, i.e, diseases and infections naturally transmitted between people and vertebrate animals.

Some 60% of emerging infectious diseases globally are zoonoses. Of the over 30 new human pathogens detected over the last three decades, 75% originated in animals.

In animal markets, there are greater chances of transmission of a virus from animals to humans, and its mutation to adapt to the human body.

It has happened wherever in the world there is unregulated mixing of humans and animals, either wild or domesticated.