Los murciélagos y la COVID-19, una injusta historia

Las zoonosis, como la rabia, el paludismo o el dengue, han afectado a los humanos desde nuestro origen. Ante la COVID-19, nuestro objetivo es destacar que los murciélagos no son los culpables de la pandemia; por el contrario, son muchos los servicios que proporcionan al ser humano en la salud, la agricultura, la alimentación y la economía. No se ha encontrado el SARS-CoV-2 en ningún murciélago: el contagio de la COVID-19 es entre humanos; 70% de las enfermedades zoonóticas, como el SARS o el MERS, proviene de animales silvestres comercializados ilegalmente, por lo que es necesario eliminar la venta ilegal en mercados insalubres que representan un foco de contagios y proliferación de enfermedades infecciosas emergentes. El exterminio de murciélagos es perjudicial, no sólo para los propios murciélagos y el ecosistema, sino para nuestra salud, economía y bienestar

Brazilian cave heritage under siege

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Los murciélagos y la COVID-19, una injusta historia

Zoonoses such as rabies, malaria, dengue and many others have affected humans since our origin. In the face of Covid-19, our aim is to highlight that bats are not to blame for the pandemic, on the contrary; there are many health services provided by bats to human beings, agriculture, food and the economy, among others. SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any bats. Covid-19 transmission is humans-to-human; 70% of zoonotic diseases, such as SARS or MERS, come from wild animals, so it is necessary to eliminate the illegal sale of wild animals in unsanitary markets, which represent a source of contagion and proliferation of emerging infectious diseases. The extermination of bats is detrimental, not only for animals and the ecosystem, but for our health, economy and well-being.Las zoonosis, como la rabia, el paludismo o el dengue, han afectado a los humanos desde nuestro origen. Ante la COVID-19, nuestro objetivo es destacar que los murciélagos no son los culpables de la pandemia; por el contrario, son muchos los servicios que proporcionan al ser humano en la salud, la agricultura, la alimentación y la economía. No se ha encontrado el SARS-CoV-2 en ningún murciélago: el contagio de la COVID-19 es entre humanos; 70% de las enfermedades zoonóticas, como el SARS o el MERS, proviene de animales silvestres comercializados ilegalmente, por lo que es necesario eliminar la venta ilegal en mercados insalubres que representan un foco de contagios y proliferación de enfermedades infecciosas emergentes. El exterminio de murciélagos es perjudicial, no sólo para los propios murciélagos y el ecosistema, sino para nuestra salud, economía y bienesta

Los murciélagos y la COVID-19, una injusta historia

Zoonoses such as rabies, malaria, dengue and many others have affected humans since our origin. In the face of Covid-19, our aim is to highlight that bats are not to blame for the pandemic, on the contrary; there are many health services provided by bats to human beings, agriculture, food and the economy, among others. SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any bats. Covid-19 transmission is humans-to-human; 70% of zoonotic diseases, such as SARS or MERS, come from wild animals, so it is necessary to eliminate the illegal sale of wild animals in unsanitary markets, which represent a source of contagion and proliferation of emerging infectious diseases. The extermination of bats is detrimental, not only for animals and the ecosystem, but for our health, economy and well-being.Las zoonosis, como la rabia, el paludismo o el dengue, han afectado a los humanos desde nuestro origen. Ante la COVID-19, nuestro objetivo es destacar que los murciélagos no son los culpables de la pandemia; por el contrario, son muchos los servicios que proporcionan al ser humano en la salud, la agricultura, la alimentación y la economía. No se ha encontrado el SARS-CoV-2 en ningún murciélago: el contagio de la COVID-19 es entre humanos. El 70% de las enfermedades zoonóticas, como el SARS o el MERS, proviene de animales silvestres comercializados ilegalmente, por lo que es necesario eliminar la venta ilegal en mercados insalubres que representan un foco de contagios y proliferación de enfermedades infecciosas emergentes. El exterminio de murciélagos es perjudicial, no sólo para los propios murciélagos y el ecosistema, sino para nuestra salud, economía y bienestar

Assessing conservation priorities in megadiverse Mexico: Mammalian diversity, endemicity, and endangerment

Abstract. The identification of areas of high priority for conservation is becoming a major endeavor for conservation biologists. Regions of high species richness and high concentrations of endemic and endangered species have been considered a priority for conservation. In this paper we use information about the species richness, composition, and distribution of mammals from Mexico for selecting priority areas for conservation. All species of terrestrial mammals were characterized by geographic range size, body mass, and conservation status, and their distributions were overlaid on a 2Њ ϫ 2Њ grid to detect areas of high concentrations of species richness, endemicity, and endangered species. We focused our analyses at both species and biogeographic levels. At the species level we examined differences among endangered, endemic, and nonendemic species in ecological characteristics correlated with vulnerability to extinction. There were significant differences between endangered and non-endangered species, and between endemic and non-endemic mammals in body size and geographic range size. At the biogeographic level simple correlation analyses were carried out to determine the relation between latitude, total species richness, number of endemic species, and number of endangered species. We found a very low correspondence among areas of high diversity, high endemicity, or high number of endangered species. The distribution of many species with restricted geographic ranges, including endemic and non-endemic species, did not coincide with areas of high species richness, endemicity, or endangerment. We suggest a conservation strategy that gives priority to areas of high concentration of endangered species and of non-endangered species with restricted distributions. Among endangered species a higher priority should be given to endemic taxa vs. non-endemic species, and to restricted species over widespread taxa in these two groups