Melbourne: Australia's northern area is being identified as most vulnerable place for a new human and animal plagues that may surface without warning, according to a research.

A study by Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease (AB-CRC) has revealed global disease hot-spots, where new and unknown plagues are most likely to erupt, spread in an arc to Australia s north.

"We re in the front line for outbreaks of diseases like SARS, bird flu, Nipah virus, enterovirus 71 and chikungunya which infect both people and animals. Such diseases are most likely to emerge in our region," AB-CRC chief executive Stephen Prowse was quoted by AAP report here today.

"The study highlights the vital importance of developing and maintaining effective disease surveillance in our region as often the only defence against a new disease is to spot it early, before it spreads" Prowse said adding "However it also offers scope to anticipate where new plagues could arise."

The study of global disease hotspots was performed by Peter Daszak and his team of Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York, a partner of AB-CRC.

"We ve developed an earthquake zone map for emerging diseases. It shows which countries are most likely to be on the front line of an emerging pandemic" Daszak said.

"We now have a way to predict the places from where the next HIV, SARS or avian influenza is likely to emerge," Daszak added.

He said a risk map showed Australia was surrounded to the north by countries that were disease hot-spots. "This means Australia needs to be forward thinking in its approach to biosecurity risk."

Source : PTI