The determining factor indicated by the WHO in the explosion of the coronavirus

Lately, when a member of the World Health Organization manifests, the information drawer on the COVID-19 pandemic opens to continue adding pages with theories and reasons why we have reached this situation. This time, It was María Neira, its Director of Public Health, who has highlighted one factor above all: climate change.

The Spanish doctor has participated during the week in the Ibero-American Conference on coronavirus and Public Health, and has given some keys on the beginning and development of the pandemic. Specific, has pointed out six key factors to end the pandemic, all of them crossed by one that affects in some way everyone, the care of the environment.

“It was a matter of time because the elements of the cocktail were served. We have had a terrible relationship with the environment, with ecosystems, with such aggressive deforestation they have a lot to do with the change in living conditions, ”says Neira, blaming citizens around the world for what happened.

Pandemics and diseases derive from not caring for the planet

The origin of the coronavirus, according to the WHO expert, is not something accidental and random that has happened now. It is the consequence of something serious such as climate change derived from not respecting the environment and polluting it. For example, Neira recalls that other serious epidemics such as AIDS, Ebola or Zika came from a “leap from animal to human health”.

That is, with our actions, he explains, we modify the natural habitat of the animals, causing “stressful environmental conditions, with deforestation and very intensive agricultural practices”. In this sense, for example, there is the case of the oceans, where “there are millions of tons of plastic”, a material that the doctor affirms that “we are eating it, a week we eat the equivalent of a credit card, not it is a question of activism ”.

In turn, he adds that we alter the natural course of animal development and biodiversity in nature with “ the commercialization of wild animal species without protection in their transfer “. All this, both the exchange of species from one place to another, the destruction of forests, jungles and other places in nature where animals live, and the pollution of the environment give rise to “infectious diseases”.

In addition to a damaged world, also unequal in resources

Another point that María Neira emphasizes is the lack of access to basic resources in much of the planet. In a year as advanced and with as much technology as 2020, he regrets that people “do not have the capacity to have soap, something that should be assumed as much as no one had a lack of access to services as basic as water and sanitation. It is a crack that we have so huge and that is essential if we want to avoid other pandemics”.

With reference precisely to the technological advances, the doctor wanted to show her disagreement with them taking priority over our environment in cities: “They are made for cars, not for people, we are going to have to fight a lot with the local authorities so that public transport is sustainable and the use of the car is avoided.”

Thus, taking advantage of the current situation in which it is recommended not to travel or make unnecessary trips, from his position at WHO, he calls for teleworking in “rural areas, with bigger houses and green spaces”.

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