the danger is in the avian flu

The director of the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Center (CCAES) of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Simón, declared this Thursday that does not anticipate that there will be a new pandemic "imminently", but has warned that climate change and high mobility have increased the risk of health crises, and has highlighted the increase in outbreaks of avian flu (H5N1), since only last year there were 1,700. Now "the most important risk" is avian flu because of its "great expansion in the animal world"Simon pointed out.

During his speech, he was asked about the statements by the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedro Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who warned yesterday that a pandemic "will be more deadly" will arrive, and for which he has asked world leaders a strategy to meet these challenges.

In this regard, Simón has said that, although it is "very difficult to predict" and little time has passed after Covid-19, we have "some risks that are there" and "at some point they could trigger" a new pandemicalthough not in an "imminent" way, reports Efe.

Now, in his opinion, the "most important risk" is the H2N1 avian flu, of which he has indicated that it has a lethality of 60% and that a mutation may arise every day that brings transmission to humans closer, and he has stressed that Faced with the appearance of 50 to 60 outbreaks of bird flu in two decades, it has gone "to having 1,700 outbreaks only last year."

Simón has participated in Valencia in the fourth Congress of International Cooperation of the Collegiate Medical Organization (WTO) on Climate Change and Global Health that is held at the Valencian College of Physicians. There, he has highlighted that climate change "is causing many diseases to spread geographically", for which reason he has underlined the need for better international coordination to deal with these global health crises. In addition, he has indicated that response teams are being created in the different countries, but it is necessary to "improve this collaboration and guarantee that we protect the population from risks, not just that we cure them of diseases."

The director of the CCAES has stated that he does not like to talk about climate change "in isolation", but rather as "the result of and part of a global change" that has occurred in the last hundred years and especially in the last 60 years, and it affects the characteristics of the population, the mechanisms and needs of production and the generation of waste, which have "ended up generating climate change".