LAUSR

According to recent scientific evidence, Brazil's wildfires are linked to deforestation. The blazes are surging in a pattern typical of forest clearing, along the edges of the agricultural frontiers (Fig. 1). Historical data shows the pattern of events: chainsaws or excavators open the way, then the wildfires, and these are followed by livestock, monoculture, or other forms of economic activity [1]. By August 24th, 2019, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) had counted more than 76,000 wildfire spots in the Brazilian Amazon, compared with 22,000 in the same period last year. The Global wildfire Emissions Database project, which includes scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; the University of California, Irvine; and Vrije University in Amsterdam, sees the same trend, although the numbers are slightly higher [1]. The situation, especially ecologically, is critical. Brazil contains about 60% of the Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world. Several million plants, animal and insect species live in the Amazon, in addition to dwellers, and the Amazon acts as an enormous carbon sink that helps to cool global temperatures, of utmost importance in the context of climate change and global warming [2]. Forest wildfires (Fig. 1), in this scenario, release this stored carbon, causing a major impact on health. For example, high air pollution immediately. The long-term impact is more considerable and challenging to estimate. The effects will be determined by the type of change in the ecosystem (landscape, fauna, flora, environment) [3,4]. During the period August 16th-17th, 2019, a group of international experts held a meeting on Zoonoses and One Health, in Pereira, Colombia, under the auspices and networking of the Colombian Association of Infectious Diseases and its Committee on Tropical Medicine, Zoonoses and Travel Medicine. This group has analyzed the situation in Brazil and set a position regarding the potential impact of the 2019 Amazon wildfires (Fig. 1) on vector-borne and zoonotic emerging diseases. The forest wildfire produces a sharp change of the landscape, from a tropical forest, characteristically humid; it changes towards a dry one, typical of deforestation. Previous studies have shown that landscape change, and primary deforestation, alters multiple ecological elements, e.g. phytotelmata habitat availability and mosquito production, as has been observed in the Peruvian Amazon with increasing rates of vectorborne disease transmission. Studies report that deforestation increases the risk of malaria and probably other vector-transmitted infections [5]. The ecologies of multiple transmissions of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases pose challenges for their control, especially in changing landscapes, even more during such deforestation situations [6]. After deforestation has occurred, the landscape will be modified to facilitate economic activities. Land-use changes can impact infectious disease transmission by increasing spatial overlap between people and wildlife disease reservoirs. Previous epidemics like the sizeable yellow fever epidemic, which began in Brazil in 2016 and had as vectors the Haemagogus leucocelaenus and H. janthinomys, which are wild mosquitoes [7], have been driven by landscape modifications, with forest fragments running in periurban areas, allowing enough interaction to produce such an epidemic [3,4]. Additionally, the Amazon region of Brazil, endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases, can, after a wildfire, can trigger a selection for survival, and with it change the habitat and behaviors of some animal species. These can be reservoirs of zoonotic bacteria, viruses, and parasites, that can adapt to suburban and urban landscapes and would increase the risk of interaction and infection leading to the emergence of diseases in new areas [8,9]. For example, with regard to the arenaviruses and hantaviruses, in rodent hosts, their geographical distribution may change, with the potential risk of increasing and representing a threat to humans [10]. Other hosts, such as birds could also transport pathogens. The situation could also help hosts to propagate diseases like Oropouche virus, a zoonotic arbovirus in which birds play an essential role maintaining sylvatic cycles [11], previously reported in areas surrounding the wildfires [12]. Human-related factors include modern life trends such as