SIBU: Sarawak Infectious Disease Centre (SIDC) and the State Forest Department should collaborate to collect and study samples of zoonotic and neglected tropical diseases from the jungle in the state.
State Deputy Minister for Education, Innovation and Talent Development Datuk Dr Annuar Rapaee said this collaboration would become part of the state’s preparation to face the possibility of a Disease X outbreak.
“I have been asked by a scientist to look into setting up a databank for unknown diseases. With the data that we have, we could compare them with data from research centres around the world and subsequently take prompt measures, including to create vaccines to prevent the outbreak of disease X or Y or Z from turning into a pandemic,” he said.
Dr Annuar said this when officiating the Forest Department’s Le Tour De Restoration - Greening Sarawak event at University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) today.
He said the emergence of unknown viruses was due to deforestation that critically occurred around the globe.
“When deforestation occurs, animals and insects move elsewhere carrying diseases with them. When the animals or insects come to an extinction, the viruses or diseases they are carrying would move to new hosts, which is humans. With the climate change, the diseases can mutate making them hard to prevent or cure,” he said.
Infectious diseases that emerge in people including HIV, Ebola, and Nipah, all of which originated in forest-dwelling animals are transmitted by a range of other animals, most of them wildlife.
He said the COVID-19 disease which started in Wuhan, China originated from bats.
Dr Annuar who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of UTS also suggested the setting up of a botanical garden on the university’s 1.6 hectare land where Sarawak native trees such as belian, meranti, selangan, engkabang, nyatoh ketiau, ramin and gaharu are grown.
“This will be beneficial to UTS in future where it can do various research apart from having new courses related to green environment, green technology and green energy, create experts in those fields and subsequently benefit the state,” he said and added the botanical garden would conserve the native trees for the future generation.
Meanwhile, the State Forest Department director Datuk Hamden Mohammad who also spoke said Sarawak has hit the 29.2 million mark in its target of planting 35 million trees by 2025 under the Le Tour De Restoration (LTDR) Greening Sarawak Campaign 2.0 programme which began in 2021.
The state has managed to record the highest number of tree planting initiativs among states in Malaysia with 29,295,293 trees.-Bernama
