Global call to take swift action against Ebola, EIDs

PRAMOD de Silva reporting from Canada

MONTREAL, Saturday - The fifth international conference on Ecology and Health concluded at the University of Montreal, Canada yesterday with a call to immediately address climate change concerns and new health challenges such as Emerging Infectious Diseases (EIDs).

The conference, which drew around 500 experts working in the fields of ecology, medicine, livestock, environment and community work from 60 countries including Sri Lanka, issued the Montreal Declaration which called on authorities around the world to do more to address health and ecological issues, bearing in mind their close connection.

This was reflected in the conference theme “Connections for Health, Ecosystems and Society”. Conference Chairperson Johanne Saint Charles, Professor of Public Communication at the University of Montreal, hailed the document as a landmark achievement for the ecological and health movement.

The term Ecohealth itself is defined as a field that strives for “sustainable health of people, wildlife and ecosystems by promoting discovery, understanding and transdisciplinarity”.

The spotlight at the conference was on diseases such as Ebola, (which is seeing its worst outbreak in West Africa with over 1,000 dead), dengue, malaria, chagas, Rift Valley Fever and Leishmaniasis which have the potential to become global in their spread.

It was pointed out that due to increased travel around the world, such diseases could be transmitted rapidly.

EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organisation focused on local conservation and global health issues, showed a series of global maps using airline flight route data to calculate and predict the probable arrival of the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus from infected travellers in West Africa.

The data was collected from flight schedules from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Morocco, Nigeria and Ghana. The analysis shows that the highest risk countries are the United States and much of Europe. The issue of bacterial resistance to antibiotics also came up during the deliberations. Most speakers touched on the issue of transmission of diseases and viral strains from both wild and domesticated (livestock, pets) animals, citing Avian Influenza as a prime example.

Another example was Ebola itself, which also infects gorillas and chimpanzees in the wild. In 1996, 21 people who consumed the meat of a chimpanzee that had died of Ebola contracted the disease and died. The importance of creating awareness among the public on the methods of transmission of diseases and any possible preventive measures through the media and other relevant outlets was also highlighted.

Several experts lamented the lack of access to the new disease-fighting technologies (vaccines and drugs) developed in the affluent countries for developing countries. Since no country could be immune from today’s emerging infectious diseases, there was a greater need for North-South cooperation on disease control, they said. In one positive development during the conference, Canada donated an experimental Ebola vaccine to the four West African countries affected by the deadly disease. The conference called for more such actions on the part of the developed world, under the guidance of the World Health Organization and also greater linkages between researchers, universities and industry.

The next EcoHealth Conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia in December 2016.