Diseases News

For the Amazon, 2021 was yet another year under the pandemic where the onslaught against nature never seemed to end. Deforestation continues, surging at year’s end Deforestation continued in the…

RIO BRANCO, Brazil — The intensification of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon is increasingly impacting the health of local populations, with a marked effect on the region’s Indigenous peoples.…

KAMPALA, Uganda — Tour guide Patrick Kataama relied heavily on income from leading gorilla-trekking tours in Uganda's national parks. These tours were abruptly shut down in late March 2020, after…

Years before the obsession with wild-borne pathogens latching onto humans gripped the world, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was already dealing with disease spillovers. Except, she worried about humans infecting gorillas in her…

A new study published in Lancet Planetary Health reports how localized deforestation and global warming are contributing to an increase in heat-related deaths in Berau, a district in Indonesia’s East…

Liliana Dávalos had only been studying geology for a few days at the National University of Colombia in 1991 when the program director told the whole class that women were…

Endangered mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s famous Volcanoes National Park could face "population collapse" within 50 years if some of them contract COVID-19, new research suggests. There are only around 1,000…

Altering Earth’s natural systems not only spreads disease to humans. Ecosystem disruption increasingly puts wild animals at risk of devastating pandemics and threatens endangered species’ survival.

Medical, public health, and conservation experts are calling for greater pathogen surveillance and regulation of the legal wildlife trade in order to quickly identify pathogens and prevent the next pandemic.

In spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic took off in the United States just as the breeding season for the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) commenced. Disease is always at the forefront…

When the first bongo was reported dead by the Sangha River in the Republic of Congo in 1997, it was believed to have drowned. Several more turned up in the following…

During the pandemic, demand for furs by Chinese, U.S. and EU fashion consumers has set off few alarms, but COVID-19 outbreaks on EU and U.S. mink farms raised questions over the fur trade’s role in spreading zoonotic disease.

It’s easier to spot the bristly, gray-brown hide of a Bornean bearded pig (Sus barbatus) ambling through orderly rows of oil palm trees, than amid a dense tropical forest. But…

This story is the result of a reporting collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto. In 2000, in the midst of Colombia’s vast Amazon rainforest, two elder members from…

For more than a year, the world has closely followed the development, approval and deployment of various coronavirus vaccines that could bring an end to the global pandemic, debating every…

The spread of fires in a Brazilian state that’s still mostly swathed in Amazon rainforest is raising alarms about risks to public health, compounding what’s already one of the worst…

Rodents live among us, but we rarely see them. Nondescript, tiny, and often nocturnal, they slip through the cracks of society, largely unnoticed. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the…

In May 2020, Shivaprakash Nagaraju, senior scientist at The Nature Conservancy in India, was working in New Delhi when he contracted COVID-19. “I had breathing problems and other symptoms, and…

Record extreme weather in the U.S., Brazil, China and elsewhere is impacting food production this year, with the future expected to be far worse. Agriculture requires “transformational change” to meet the climate crisis, say experts.

The new, more contagious COVID-19 Delta variant is raging worldwide, while new pandemics are emerging at an ever-faster rate. But we’re still not taking the urgent action needed to prevent the next zoonotic disease outbreak, experts say.

Deep-rooted mistrust in the Malaysian federal and state governments is preventing many Indigenous Penan people from accepting the COVID-19 vaccine. While there have been reports of some individuals traveling up…

Demand for manganese in China is having a huge impact on the other side of the world: for the Indigenous Kayapó people in the Brazilian Amazon. The metal is essential…

A recent investigation has found dangerously high levels of mercury among women from different Indigenous communities in four Latin American countries. This chemical element is a neurotoxic substance that presents…

Mountain gorillas, one of the world’s endangered apes, appear be facing a fresh health threat after a successful conservation campaign saved them from looming extinction, a new study says. Thanks…

Indigenous people living near the Teles Pires and São Manoel dams in the Brazilian Amazon say the projects have polluted their river, causing health problems and wrecking the fishery. COVID-19 made things worse.

Cambodians have long used charcoal to cook their food, with its use ingrained in the culture. Innovative entrepreneurs, using education and briquettes made from coconut shell and woody waste, are changing norms.

The Amazon Indigenous group — utilizing lessons learned from the disease-ridden contact period — is protecting itself from the pandemic ravaging Brazil, and documenting its success story on video.

Wildcat miners fired shots and set houses ablaze in an Indigenous village in the Brazilian Amazon this week, fueling worries among Indigenous rights groups of further violent attacks by gold…

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised plenty of questions about whether the planet's declining health is what ails humans. The answer is yes, and it’s not a metaphorical response. Distorting the…

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — In a move that has prompted outrage in Cambodia and beyond, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on May 5 sentenced five activists from the environmental group…