In a few years, outbreaks of Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases , such as West Nile virus, could occur in areas where they are unknown today.
In fact, these will end up affecting animals that today do not develop them, and all this, as a consequence of climate change. These are, in essence, the main conclusions of a study promoted by zoologist Daniel Brooks, of the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
In his essay, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B , Brooks argues that the profound changes in ecosystems that will occur as a result of this phenomenon will end up putting us in contact with pathogens capable of making us sick to which we have never been exposed. .
The same will happen with wildlife, livestock or crops . “There will certainly be a lot of very localized outbreaks, putting health systems and veterinary resources to the test,” he says.
This process is beginning to be noticeable both in the tropics and in some arctic regions. Thus, Brooks points out that in areas of Costa Rica where capuchin and spider monkeys have disappeared, their parasites have “moved”, so to speak, to howler monkeys.
In Canada, the presence of nematodes that occur in caribou has been discovered in musk oxen (bovids that live in very northern areas). Brooks cautions that although it has been assumed that parasites cannot easily pass from one species to another, this new scenario seems to favor it.
