Lessen contact with wild or pet animals

The transmission of diseases between humans and animals poses significant threats to daily life, as infections are becoming increasingly common. Over the past two decades, humanity has faced outbreaks of SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza, swine flu, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These diseases, particularly avian influenza, Ebola, and other zoonotic diseases, have resulted in substantial casualties. COVID-19 alone has claimed over seven million lives, and its complete control remains elusive as WHO recently mentioned that it is still killing around 1,700 people a week around the world.
Historically, many global pandemics and epidemics have been animal-based. Currently, infectious diseases continue to threaten the interactions between humans and animals. These diseases endanger not only human health but also animal health and livelihoods. Livestock productivity, crucial for meat, milk, and egg production, suffers, adversely affecting the livelihoods of livestock breeders, crop farmers, and the state economy.
Zoonotic viruses can infect humans through contact with pets, livestock, and wildlife. Markets selling meat and products from wild animals are hotspots for undocumented viruses that pose risks to humans. Additionally, urban residents living near forests or mountains may be susceptible to animal-borne diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified vulnerable groups most at risk of animal-borne infections. These include shepherds, infants, young children, senior citizens, the elderly with ailments, agricultural and food production workers, immunocompromised patients, individuals undergoing medical treatments, and pregnant women. These groups should take extra precautions to avoid such infections.
Whenever the world experiences losses in the bio-ecological system, the contacts between humans and animals increase. It creates more possibilities for spreading viruses, bacteria and parasites from animals to humans. Hence, people need to take care of contact with animals. They have to exercise systematic hand-washing before and after contact with animals as well as before and after feeding them. People need to avoid being very close to animals and pets. If so, humans can escape from infection of diseases from animals.
It is necessary to set some discipline between pet lovers and pet animals in society. If so, anybody will be free from unacceptable diseases, and strange viruses from diseases to be difficultly cured will not come out. Only when an unwritten rule is adopted between human society and animals will they avoid the impacts of animal-borne diseases on humans as well as human-borne diseases on animals. If so, human society’s close contact with animals in different animal species will be safe and sound for daily life.