We have created "a perfect storm" for diseases from wildlife to spill over into humans and spread quickly around the world, scientists warn.

As part of that effort, they have now developed a pattern-recognition system to predict which wildlife diseases pose most risk to humans.

"In the last 20 years, we've had six significant threats - SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza and swine flu," Prof Matthew Baylis from the University of Liverpool told BBC News.

"And this is not the last pandemic we are going to face, so we need to be looking more closely at wildlife disease.".

Many scientists agree that our behaviour - particularly deforestation and our encroachment on diverse wildlife habitats - is helping diseases to spread from animals into humans more frequently.

According to Prof Kate Jones from University College London, evidence "broadly suggests that human-transformed ecosystems with lower biodiversity, such as agricultural or plantation landscapes, are often associated with increased human risk of many infections".

Prof Eric Fevre from the University of Liverpool and the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, says researchers need to be on constant watch in areas where there is a higher risk of disease outbreaks?

Farms on the edge of forests, markets where animals are bought and sold - all are blurred boundaries between humans and wildlife, and places where diseases are more likely to emerge?

"New diseases pop-up in the human population probably three to four times per year," Prof Fevre said

The current crisis, Prof Fevre said, provides a lesson for many of us about the consequence of our own impact on the natural world