Film Pre-Release: Making pandemics

Wednesday 4 May 18.00

Salle A

in English and in French

Presentation

Since the year 2000, humanity has been confronted with at least one new infectious disease per year. SARS, Ebola, Lassa fever, or Covid-19: all of these emerging diseases are zoonoses, diseases transmitted by animals to humans.

At the head of a multidisciplinary team based in French Guiana, researcher Rodolphe Gozlan (IRD) has identified the “factors that cause recurrent emergences”: deforestation, extreme weather conditions and urbanization. He then “compiled all the data on a global scale” and identified two risk zones – the Wuhan region in China and southern Uganda. The study was completed in September 2019, two months before the first case of COVID 19 detected in Wuhan. This is not divination, but science!

This science has a name: health ecology, which brings together disciplines like parasitology, virology, human and animal medicine, and anthropology, with the aim of understanding the emergence of new infectious diseases.

So many activities that hinder or destroy the life of ecosystems, which pushes the pathogens hosted since the dawn of time by rodents, bats or primates, to “come out of the woodwork” and infect human populations. “It’s not the animals that are responsible. animals that are responsible, but us,” explains the primatologist and health ecologist Thomas Gillespie (Emory University). In the film, you will see twenty scientist from five continents dicuss their overall vision of the action needed to at the local, national, and international level.

A film by by Marie-Monique Robin with the collaboration of Serge Morand (CNRS) and Juliette Binoche.

Produced by M2r Film