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Dangerous to hunters, butchers and consumers
More and more “discussions” and “opinions” and “experts” talking about the Ebola outbreak and international spread on TV and in the newspapers here this morning.
NOT ONE COMMENT about the bushmeat trade that started this outbreak. If you do not discuss the source, how can you talk about a “response”?
And the usual comments by deniers that say that flu and malaria kills many more people than Ebola. Of course that is true – but let’s look at the real statistics – only about 2% of people who get flu die, and those are people usually classified in “high risk” categories like the elderly. And while malaria might kill up to 500,000 people annually it is an entirely preventable disease. And a highly treatable disease – I should know as I have had malaria three times while living in Kenya and Botswana. Ebola is not treatable – and the mortality rate from this western African strain is over 70%.
But it is preventable. Bushmeat is the source and as long as people continue to eat bushmeat there will be future outbreaks. This is guaranteed. As I said in an earlier post we can continue to spend scores of millions by putting out fires or we can address the root causes. The problem is that we STILL do not really know what species are responsible for communicating Ebola to humans.
Fruit bats are now a prime candidate, but that is only because a pathogen closely related to Ebola, Marburg virus, was found among fruit bats. Let’s be very clear here. Monkeys, bats, duikers are all considered potential sources of Ebola. But until the real source is discovered all bushmeat should be considered a likely source of infection.
We also hear little mention of another global scourge that began with bushmeat – HIV-AIDS. There are two broad types of HIV (surprisingly called HIV I and HIV II). Both have been identified to originate from African primates involved in the bushmeat trade.
So let’s stop beating about the bush. You cannot hope to control disease outbreaks by ignoring the source of, in this case, a virus that comes from bushmeat. We should consider all bushmeat as a potentially dangerous product, not only because of Ebola. Unless and until there is much more research by national and international health authorities about the health consequences of eating bushmeat, we should stop using it.
Picture credit: telegraph.co.uk
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