Are this times of plague?

Authors

  • Jorge Alvar

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.24.25533

Keywords:

Poverty, pandemics, Anthropocene, health determinants

Abstract

Pandemics have existed since the dawn of humanity as a result of the space that is shared between microorganisms and humans. A series of determinants, such as poverty, ignorance and lack of hygiene favored them then and, today, these circumstances continue to exist in many countries. In the present study, three pandemics are reviewed to exemplify their causes at each time —also the successes— and to be able to reflect on the reasons for the current pandemics. But, in addition, at the present time there are other reasons that favor them, such as overpopulation, environmental aggression and the speed of international travel. The magnitude of these new determinants have led to the change of geological era in the course of a few thousand years, having opened the way to the Anthropocene. Its consequences can be analyzed disease by disease, but for scholars it must be understood as a whole, a paradigm shift in what we understand as health and that will lead to unpredictable consequences if measures are not taken in time.

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Author Biography

Jorge Alvar

Jorge Alvar Ezquerra holds a PhD in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a degree in Tropical Medicine from Hamburg University. He directed the National Center for Tropical Medicine at the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, the WHO-NTD Leishmaniasis Program in Geneva and was Associate Professor at the School of Pharmacy of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He is currently director of the Leishmaniasis Program at DNDi in Geneva. In 2021 he was elected as a member of the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (RANME).

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Published

2022-12-30

How to Cite

Alvar, J. (2022). Are this times of plague?. EU-topías. A Journal on Interculturality, Communication, and European Studies, 24, 107–116. https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.24.25533
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