Conservation biology meets medical science

ABSTRACT

that syndemics are a new path to global health research. Many medical researchers have since picked up on the topic, leading to the suggestion that the ongoing Covid-19 crisis is a syndemic and not a pandemic (Horton 2020). In a syndemic, the Covid-19 virus is not the primary cause of the current pandemic, but only a trigger due to the globally deteriorating human health (Horton 2020). Kenyon (Kenyon 2020) added that the syndemic approach needs to include an ecological dimension, while Mendenhall (Mendenhall 2020) stated that the context matters. None of the colleagues was wrong. However, it shows how little researchers from different disciplines interact and exchange on concepts. Syndemics is already well captured in the more medical-orientated OneHealth concept (Gibbs 2014), as well as in the more ecologically-orientated EcoHealth concept (Rapport 2007). All of these concepts and terms have in common to state that human health is inextricably linked to the environmental health and health-determining factors in the highly complex socio-ecological system. The complexity of this socio-ecological system, in which human health is embedded, is the underlying factor for the emergence of these slightly differently centred concepts, while the aim of all of these are the same understanding the underlying causes for the increasing frequency of epidemics or panattributed to climate change, biodiversity loss, habitat degradation and an increasing rate of wildlife-human contacts, but that all of these are caused by synergies between