People More at Risk for Animal Infections

Changes in how humans live and travel have increased the spread of diseases we get from animals, a new series of reports says. The new reports, published in the journal Lancet, focus on zoonotic infections. These are diseases that spread from other animals to humans. Infections in wildlife may be spread to humans by carriers such as mosquitoes and ticks. Sometimes they are spread by direct contact. All of these contacts have increased, the Lancet articles say. Reasons include widespread changes in land use and more world trade and travel. For example, people may be exposed to wildlife for the first time when an area opens up to logging or farming. Some infections that spread to humans from animals, such as HIV, have become pandemics. This means they affect many people across a wide area. Until now, scientists have never predicted that an infection would become a pandemic.