By Kiley Price
May 27, 2021
Protect nature or risk future pandemics, expert warns
8 min
Humanity’s continued assault on the environment could unleash another pandemic — and soon.
So says Dr. Neil Vora, Conservation International’s new pandemic prevention fellow. Vora, an epidemiologist, has devoted his career to chasing infectious diseases — from Ebola-stricken villages in West Africa to the deserted streets of New York City as the coronavirus pandemic raged.
In a recent interview with Conservation News, Vora discussed how his experience as a physician has helped him explore the links between human health and the health of the planet — and why humanity must ‘fix its broken relationship with nature’ to prevent future pandemics.
Question: What started your passion for pandemics — or, more specifically, preventing them?
Answer: My dad had smallpox as a child. Growing up, I saw the disease's legacy in the scars it left on his face. When I asked him about it, he’d explain that he was lucky to have survived because the virus is extremely deadly; it can kill 1 out of every 3 people it infects. This made me aware at a very young age of the devastating impacts that infectious diseases can have and the importance of finding ways to prevent them. Then, as a teenager, I watched the 1995 movie “Outbreak,” and it was over — I knew I wanted to wear a hazmat suit and chase dangerous diseases around the world for my career.
Q: How did you get your start chasing diseases?
Q: Wow. What did it take to get NYC’s contact tracing program off the ground?
A: Last May, my team and I had less than a month to hire and train a team of more than 2,500 contact tracers, deliver supplies, develop safety and operational protocols, and launch a contact tracing program for the largest city in the United States. It was a Herculean effort that required us to work tirelessly, day and night for weeks.
Q: How does a doctor and epidemiologist end up working in conservation?
Further reading:
Therefore, conservation is critical for public health — and it goes beyond just preventing infectious disease outbreaks.
Q: What have we learned from COVID-19 that could prevent another pandemic?
A: We must fix our broken relationship with nature or we can likely expect another pandemic within a decade. To do this, we need to stop virus spillover at its source, before new infectious diseases have a chance to trigger an outbreak — or even a full-blown pandemic.
Although some countries are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel due to the increasing availability of COVID-19 vaccines, the coronavirus is still devastating many populations. I’ve spent years responding to one outbreak after another — and almost every one of those outbreaks originated from animals. In my new role at Conservation International, I’m excited to take a proactive rather than reactive role by addressing the drivers of outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics. Now is the time to create policies and invest in strategies for prevention — protecting nature will help us save millions of lives and trillions of dollars in the future.
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