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 Humans can contract Ebola from bats, which are carriers of the
virus, as well as from other animals.
Professor Nigel Lightfoot said the additional viruses had been
identified by scientists from the National Institute for
Communicable Diseases in South Africa.
“They tell me they have got 16 other (viruses)...which are just
waiting to spread to humans and cause the next (epidemic),” he told
a conference in London on tackling serious infectious diseases.
“So you shouldn’t be saying if there is a next one. The message is
when is the next emerging public health threat that is going to
follow Ebola.”
More than 8,600 people have died in the epidemic that began in
Guinea a year ago and has led to more than 21,700 cases reported
across nine countries.
Lightfoot said the World Bank would shortly announce hundreds of
millions of dollars in investment in infrastructure in the three
countries worst affected by Ebola – Guinea, Sierra Leone and
Liberia.
The crisis has hit Liberia and Sierra Leone particularly hard
because recent civil wars have left their health services in
tatters, the conference hosted by think tank Royal United Services
Institute heard. The conflicts also fueled a brain drain as doctors
left to work in the West.
Lightfoot, who is executive director of Connecting Organisations for
Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS), an international NGO which
aims to flag up potential risks, said early communication was key to
preventing outbreaks turning into epidemics.
As a result of the Ebola crisis, CORDS is setting up a specialized
West African network which is partly funded by the World Bank.
Lightfoot said it was vital for disease prevention specialists to
work with people on the ground to build fast, smart surveillance
systems.
He said it was also important not to forget traditional healers who
can play a key role in stopping Ebola and other diseases. In some
places 60-70 percent of people visit healers.
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In Democratic Republic of Congo, which has seen several Ebola
outbreaks, health experts are teaching traditional healers how to
spot patients with certain symptoms and direct them to the health
system.
In addition to bats, humans can also contract Ebola from other
animals such as monkeys which have come into contact with infected
bats. The danger lies in exposure to infected blood in the killing
and preparation of the animals.
But Lightfoot said it was pointless to tell people to stop eating
monkeys which are a valuable source of protein and have been eaten
for thousands of years.
“Talking to the prime minister of Guinea, he said, ‘Don’t tell my
people not to eat monkeys because it doesn’t work. I know, he said,
I tried to say you shouldn’t eat bush meat, bats and monkeys. It
doesn’t work and people will continue to eat it'.”
Lightfoot said the answer was to minimize the risks by teaching
people how to butcher animals safely and cook the meat well “so it’s
monkey stew, not monkey tartare.”
He told Thomson Reuters Foundation there was no indication as to how
serious the 16 newly identified viruses were.
(Reporting by Emma Batha, Editing by Maria Caspani)
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