Four diseases transmitted from animals to humans will kill twelve times as many people in 2050 as in 2020, researchers fear.
Experts at US biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks called for “urgent action” to address the risk to global public health.
They warned that human epidemics caused by zoonotic diseases – also known as spillover effects – could become more common in the future due to climate change and deforestation.
Both factors ensure that people come into contact with animals more often.
The team’s analysis examined historical trends for four specific viral pathogens.
Four diseases transmitted from animals to humans will kill twelve times as many people in 2050 as in 2020, researchers fear
These were filoviruses, including Ebola and Marburg, SARS (Covid’s cousin), Nipah and Machupo (which causes Bolivian hemorrhagic fever).
The study did not take into account Covid, which caused the global pandemic of 2020 and is believed to have originated in bats.
More than 3,000 outbreaks between 1963 and 2019 were investigated and 75 flooding events were identified in 24 countries.
The database included epidemics and outbreaks reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) that occurred since 1963 and killed 50 or more people.
The events caused 17,232 deaths, including 15,771 from filoviruses and mainly in Africa.
Researchers say epidemics are increasing by nearly 5 percent each year.
“If this annual increase continues, we expect the pathogens analyzed to cause four times as many flooding events and 12 times as many deaths in 2050 as in 2020,” she added.
The researchers also suspected that the numbers were likely an underestimate due to the strict inclusion criteria for the pathogens in the analysis.
They said the review of the evidence suggests that recent epidemics fueled by zoonotic spillover effects “are not an anomaly or a random cluster” but rather “follow a decades-long trend in which epidemics fueled by flooding effects become, is both greater and has also become more common.”
The team added that “urgent action is needed to address a major and growing risk to global health,” based on historical trends.
The results were published in the journal BMJ Global Health.
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
