News

A virus coming to your neighbourhood?

Ebola virus has been much in the news recently. Infected humans have up to an 80% mortality rate, and the virus seems also to be communicated to health care workers even while dressed in their “space suits”.

The recent western Africa outbreak has killed more people than any other previous epidemic and shows no signs of abating. Travel advisories have been issued to source countries in western Africa and borders have been closed.

The World Health Organization has declared it a crisis, and so has the parent organization, the United Nations.

But

The WHO has not told people to stop eating bushmeat. While we still do not know the source of the Ebola virus, there is very good evidence that it has a wildlife source. Closely related Marburg virus has been isolated from fruit bats, and most Ebola virus outbreaks can be traced back (like the current one) to someone bitten by a monkey.

Another UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, also needs to get involved. While the FAO says this:

• In the Congo Basin, 34 million people depend on bushmeat for protein consuming estimated 579 million forest mammals annually adding up to about 5 million tonnes of dressed wild meat.
• Hunting rates in tropical Africa are more than six times greater than sustainable levels.
• In Asia large animals are already gone from most tropical forests.

They also say this:

"FAO prepared a regional GEF project for Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic to implement / test a new approach to bushmeat: the legal, sustainable use of selected non-threatened species through participatory wildlife management. "

So on the one hand the FAO bemoans biodiversity loss and then institutes a Global Environment Fund program to “sustainably utilize” bushmeat in a diversity of countries?

The bushmeat trade is both a reflection of poverty among rural communities and a commercial trade. For example, it is estimated that each year 270 tonnes of illegal bushmeat reaches Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport alone. Where are the sniffer dogs? 

Perhaps the WHO and the FAO could join forces to condemn rather than promote the bushmeat trade. It would aid both conservation and the health of people who consume this product.

Picture credit: https://readtiger.com/wkp/en/Ebola_virus_disease

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