Covid-19: 240 NGOs call on WHO to end wildlife markets

Lisbon, 7 April 2020 – More than 240 Non-Governmental Organizations sent a letter to the World Health Organization demanding a ban on wildlife markets and a precautionary approach to wildlife trade.

Several NGOs from all over the world sent a letter to the Diretor General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the Co-ordinator of Traditional and Complementary Medicine Unit (TCM), Zhang Qi, demanding that WHO recognizes that the demand for wildlife and wildlife products is a primary cause of the emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases, posing a severe risk to global health. 

The NGOs main demands to the WHO are:

• Recommend to governments worldwide that they institute a permanent ban on live wildlife markets, drawing an unequivocal link between these markets and their proven threats to human health.

• Recommend to governments that they address the potential risks to human health from the trade in wildlife - including collection from the wild, ranching, farming, transport, and trade through physical or online markets for any purpose – and act to close down or limit such trade in order to mitigate those risks.

• Unequivocally exclude the use of wildlife, including from captive bred specimens, in the WHO’s definition and endorsement of Traditional Medicine and revise WHO’s 2014-2023 Traditional Medicine Strategy accordingly to reflect this change.

• Assist governments and lead a coordinated response among the World Trade Organisation, World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and other multilateral organisations worldwide in awareness-raising activities to clearly inform of the risks of wildlife trade to public health, social cohesion, economic stability, law and order, and individual health.

• Support and encourage initiatives that deliver alternative sources of protein to subsistence consumers of wild animals, in order to further reduce the risk to human health.

Read the full letter here.

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