These days I remember the discussions that we had about the outbreaks of emerging diseases such as HIV, Ebola, Zika, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, and others in our global health class during MPH. Similarly, most of the world leaders from different sectors ignored what public health

experts were telling them about the next big one. How the world ignored the circumstances that can lead to pandemics such has #COVID19 pandemic? The world was so busy about creating wealth, robbing nature, disturbing biodiversity, natural habitat, and above all else ignoring

pandemic and disaster preparedness. If we read the literature and research on emerging diseases, there were warnings from scientists about events like #Coronavirus emergence. About 60% of newly emerged diseases in the last few decades are zoonotic diseases which were ignored

and weren’t taken as serious threats. The #EbolaVirus outbreak in West Africa which killed more than 11,000 humans was ignored. The horrors stories of Ebola outbreak didn’t reach our drawing rooms because it happened in poor West African countries. The rich countries were too far

away to be affected by #Ebola. The world couldn’t imagine that a pandemic like this could happen. Therefore we didn’t take any measures or serious thinking about the reasons of outbreaks of emerging diseases. With all our technologies, many of us thought of our selves as

invincible to be affected by tiny particles such as an RNA viruses. The immaturity is shown now too by blaming each other by world leaders let alone the silly conspiracy theories that are going rounds on Social Media. We need solidarity as emphasized by @WHO, @UN, and UN leaders.

I hope we are able to control this pandemic in the next few weeks or months. Afterwards, all the countries have to think about doing what they can to prevent the next big one. It would need a lot of cooperation between different countries. LMIC would need the support of high

Income countries. We all would need to learn from each other and most importantly we would need to change the way we are living and are affecting the ecosystem and biodiversity. #COVID19 #CoronaPandemic #WorldHealthDay #WorldHealthDay2020 #CoronaVirus