• Question: Given the recent scares with Ebola and the suite of "Flu's", do you think the next potential pandemic is going to come from an as yet undiscovered disease or from ancient diseases that are being "activated" by climate change? For example, a disease that has been eradicated but could come back, such as polio. Thank you for your time today and good luck for the competition.

    Asked by GMa to Abid, Donna, Sanjib, Thomas, Avril on 15 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Donna Johnson

      Donna Johnson answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      Probably from a mutated from of a disease we know of at the moment, something like an animal virus that has become able to infect humans (this is what happened with HIV too, or bird flu).

    • Photo: Thomas Booth

      Thomas Booth answered on 16 Jun 2017:

      This is a fantastic question!

      I’m not sure how likely it is that climate change will ‘awaken’ anything old, but we should be very careful not to discount diseases we have previously eradicated. You mentioned Polio, which is a good example. Syria has seen very dramatic drop in sanitation due to the ongoing conflict and has started to see new cases!

      The worry about climate change is that it may cause more extreme weather events and displace thousands of people, making them vulnerable to all sorts of diseases, including ones that we have supposedly ‘eradicated.’

    • Photo: Avril Tucker

      Avril Tucker answered on 18 Jun 2017:

      Wow! Good question! Thom has given a pretty good answer to this one. I would agree that sanitation, or the lack of it, is a common cause of disease outbreak. Although this is not the only cause.

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