Many infectious diseases heave emerged over the past decades to threaten human beings as viruses leap the species barrier from wild animals and bacteria mutate into antibiotic-resistant strains, scientists reported on Wednesday.
Presenting a map of “hotspots” of new infectious diseases, they predicted that the next pandemic is likeliest to come out of poor tropical countries, where burgeoning human populations come into contact with wildlife.
A three year investigation led by four major institutions tracked 335 incidents since 1940 when a new infectious disease emerged. The category includes HIV/AIDS, which has slain or infected more than 65 million people around the world, and outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and H5N1 bird flu, which have cost tens of billions of dollars to contain.
The emergence of new diseases have quadrupled roughly over the past 50 years, says the study, appearing in the British journal Nature.
Sixty percent of them are so-called zoonoses, or diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans. Most zoonoses come from wild animals, especially mammals, which constitute species mostly related to humans.
Novel pathogens that adapt to humans can be very lethal, as humans have no resistance to them.
Areas that present the biggest potential source for a new zoonose are the whole of a East Asia region, the Indian sub-continent, the
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