Mexico: stopping the next pandemic

The world's still reeling from the devastation inflicted by coronavirus, but specialists are already focusing on the next global pandemic. A team of Franco-Mexican scientists in Mexico is investigating infectious diseases that transfer from animals to humans, known as 'zoonoses'.

Although bats were deemed to have been a source of coronavirus transmission and are a particular focus of study, the central aim is to establish precisely how pathogens jump to humans, no matter what the original animal source.

Rosa Elena Sarmiento's Head of the Virology Laboratory at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Rosa Elena Sarmiento: "So what this project aims to do is to have this knowledge in order to be able to predict future pandemics if possible, which is what has just happened to us recently, with the knowledge of which viruses are circulating, so that we can give a risk map of these areas and put the red lights where they should be."

The study is centred in a part of Mexico's Yucatan jungle where the impact of a dramatic growth in both agriculture and tourism has resulted in widespread deforestation. This has led to humans and wildlife living in immediate proximity, bringing great risks, since the animal population harbours up to 800,000 potentially transmissible viruses.

Local people's blood is analysed by researchers for zoonotic diseases, so that preventative measures can be put in place, as collaborator Audrey Arnal explains.

Audrey Arnal: "If there are viruses that are also in the wild and in the human population, we know that in these viruses we have to develop surveillance and prevention strategies because a slightly more virulent strain can develop and then an epidemic can occur."

Workshops and consultations with locals are part and parcel of the project, where pertinent social and economic issues are shared and safer forms of coexistence with nature are promoted.

The overarching aim is to pre-empt another lethal outbreak by devising procedures which can be employed across the world to arrest the development of zoonoses.

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