Researchers have demonstrated the highly dangerous Ebola Virus for the first time with a bat in West Africa. Further investigations should show whether more bats are affected and how you can spread the Virus, said the Liberian health Ministry. “This information will help us to develop strategies to reduce the risk of further epidemics,” it said. Antibodies against the Virus had already been detected in bat of animals in the Region.
The analysis of the genome revealed a large measure of agreement with the so-called Zaire-Ebola Virus have caused in West Africa 2014/2015 the devastating Ebola outbreak, with around 11,000 of the dead, said of the virologist Simon Anthony of Columbia University in New York to the Fund. “That’s not important, because what we know so far, how it came to the West Africa epidemic,” said the analysis, the participants in the research. Now could be about Ebola found out, also with regard to the question of how the Virus to humans will transfer.
The Fund has not yet been published in a reputable scientific publication, because the investigations are ongoing. (A message on the website of the University of Columbia, see here.) So far, only the DNA had been around a quarter of the samples of 4000 animals from Liberia, analyzed, explained Anthony. It is especially the authorities in Liberia is important to warn the population immediately before the killing and consumption of bats. The deadly consequences of the Ebola Virus are known. “Therefore, it would have been wrong for this Fund to withhold,” says Anthony.
Health Ministry warns of hunting bats
Experts assume that bats or flying can be dogs carriers of the Virus, and thus the starting point of epidemics. In bat animals of Central Africa, the pathogen has been demonstrated already years ago. At the well as a carrier identified bat in West Africa, it is a long-wing bat species Miniopterus inflatus, which lived in caves and from insects fed.
In the case of hundreds of other previously tested bats, the Virus could not be confirmed, however. So could it be that the animal was infected randomly with a different wild, the species is normally, but not a Reservoir for the pathogen.
The Ministry of health in Monrovia has called on all Liberians to hunt no bats to kill or to eat. In Liberia, owned by a UN Index showed that of the ten poorest countries in the world, serve wild animals such as bats frequently as a food.
In the Video: On the Front lines in West Africa – the fight against Ebola
In Liberia, Africa HIV epidemic, since the end of the West – mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia had met – no Ebola disease became more known. In Eastern Congo there are currently the second worst outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever. There are more than 700 people have already contracted the disease, almost 450 people died.
A to the West Africa epidemic developed protective Ebola vaccine shows in Congo, according to experts, so far good results. The Virus is named after a river in the Congo. There it was demonstrated decades ago in the then-Zaire called the country for the first time. Infected the Virus can be transmitted through body fluids such as blood, sweat or vomit.
