Download How the destruction of rainforest could help create new strains of

How the destruction of rainforest could help create new
strains of diseases?
By: Maya Abdelhamid
In is essay I will be talking about how the destruction of rainforests and normal
forests could help create new strains of diseases. There are many reasons for this
change but not all of them are affected by only deforestation.
Over the last 30 years, the death rate from infectious diseases increases to alarm
international health experts. There are many reasons for this dramatic increase. Lots of
health experts agree that climate change affects the diseases, mostly vector-borne
diseases. Vector-borne diseases are a type of disease that is passed from one organism
to the other. Malaria is one of the most known examples of vector-borne diseases. It is
passed through mosquitoes. Most vector-borne diseases live and breed in the same
environments. These environments are warm and dense.
Global emergence of infectious diseases is associated with the social changes and the
increase of the human population that started changing in the past 50 years. The
increase of the human population causes us to find more resources. That means
chopping down trees for wood, paper and other things. Same thing with water, lakes and
rivers are drying up from our use of it. These things cause deforestation and dried up
lakes. Natural water and forests are very important for our survival. But the number of
forests and lakes are decreasing every year. Forest clearances and dried up lakes make
good habitats for disease vectors (mosquitoes, fleas and ticks). They use the left over
resources to live on.
The environment’s role in the emergence of diseases is obvious in the connections
between the consequences from the changes humans are making to the environment.
We go back to the increase of the human population. That increase forces us to live in
crowded places. And dense places offer more food, water that help rodents and vectorborne pathogens to ‘colonize”. Poverty, poor living conditions (lack of sanitation and
infrastructure for wastewater and solid waste management) gives vector-borne
diseases more opportunities to infect humans and animals. So we are not the only ones
in danger but other animals are too. Storm drainage and sewerage systems that don’t
work increase the spread of waterborne pathogens causing cholera and leptospirosis.
Irrigated agriculture (artificial application of water to land/soil) makes breeding
grounds for mosquitoes, which can also spread malaria. Zoonotic infection commonly
occurs when humans live near a large number of animals, mostly agricultural situations.
In conclusion, I believe that the destruction of forests help create and spread new
strains of diseases. The sources I have explored showed me that deforestation affects
the creation of diseases. They create good habitats for disease vectors. Lots of other
things contribute to the creation of new diseases and new strains in these diseases, but
the destruction of diseases affects that a lot.