Emerging infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans, known as zoonoses, have become an increasing global health concern. From Ebola viruses to new strains of influenza, outbreaks of these pathogens most frequently occur where people and wildlife come into close contact. One such place is the area surrounding Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a region rich in biodiversity with nearby human populations that depend on the forest for their livelihoods.
Recently, our team adapted the Living Safely With Bats Book for use in the Amazonian region of Peru, where people living in close proximity to bats is common. Originally developed for use in Africa and Asia (Martinez et al. 2022), the Living Safely with Bats books are moderated picture books designed to be shared with communities by a local facilitator. These books provide straightforward advice on how to coexist safely with bats using a One Health approach, and our team was excited to expand their use to a new region.
While SARS-CoV-2 has been the focus of everyone’s attention since December of 2019 and continues to impact people’s health around the world, coronaviruses are not a new concern to those studying and responding to emerging diseases and outbreaks. Prior to the pandemic, outbreaks caused by coronaviruses, such as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-1, presented threats to public health and safety.
In November of 2022, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) arrived in Peru, triggering massive pelican and sea lion die-offs. This publication reports genomic characterization of HPAI/H5N1 viruses in two species of marine mammals (dolphins and sea lions) and three species of seabirds (sanderlings, pelicans, and cormorants). These viruses are rapidly accruing mutations that warrant further examination and highlight an urgent need for active local surveillance to manage outbreaks and limit spillover into other species, including humans.
In June of this year, the EpiCenter for EID Intelligence team gathered for the 2023 CREID Annual Meeting, a network-level meeting that brought together all ten CREID Research Centers, the coordinating center, representatives from NIAID, and numerous stakeholder groups. This year, fifteen members of the EpiCenter attended the meeting, providing an invaluable opportunity for our project leads from Peru, Uganda, and the United States to meet in person for the first time since the project's launch in 2020.
A virus previously found only in bats was detected in the antibodies of people screened for exposure to sarbecoviruses between 2017 and 2020 in rural Myanmar in Southeast Asia, according to a study from the University of California, Davis and collaborators in Myanmar and Singapore. The work is published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
New publication led by OHI's Dr. Tierra Smiley Evans highlights the importance of conducting surveillance of peri-urban primates in regions of high arbovirus transmission.
Myanmar is among the least studied but most heavily forested region in Asia, and CHIKV, ZIKV, DENV and JEV are highly endemic in humans. Scientists investigated whether Myanmar peri-urban primates, living near the largest urban city of Yangon, are exposed to arboviruses of public health concern and could be sources of spillover or recipients of spillback of human pathogenic arboviral diseases.
