DEADLY VIRUS YET TO COME.

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, the doctor who discovered Ebola, has warned of deadly viruses ahead.

He announced this after carrying out tests on a patient with symptoms almost similar to Ebola at the Congo’s National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinshasa.

All the results came back negative for the viral disease, which means the ailment the patient has is new and still a mystery.

That makes her patient zero of ‘Disease X,’ with X denoting ‘unexpected’ according to the World Health Organization.

Tested blood samples In an interview with CNN, Muyembe warned that more zoonotic diseases, transferable from animals to humans are on the way.

“We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out. And that’s what constitutes a threat for humanity,” he explained.

Some of the zoonotic diseases include yellow fever, rabies and brucellosis, passed on from rodents and insects.

HIV is also known to have emerged from a chimpanzee before mutating into a human plague.

The same applies to the novel Coronavirus, believed to have come from bat soup at a market in China.

Coronavirus is believed to have come from a wet market in China.

Years ago, Muyembe tested blood samples on patients at the Yambuku Mission Hospital in Congo in a bid to understand the mysterious disease where victims hemorrhaged to their death.

Destruction of the ecology

The disease was so deadly that up to 88% of patients and 80% of their caregivers succumbed.

When the samples were sent to the United States, they had a worm-shaped virus that would be named Ebola after a river that was near where it first erupted.

According to him, Africa’s tropical rainforests are a breeding ground for potentially fatal viruses that could ravage the world just like COVID-19 and Ebola did.

He added that future pandemics could ravage the world more than COVID-19. This is attributed to the widespread destruction of the ecology by humans, as well as trade in wildlife.

As natural habitats of larger animals continue to be tampered with, bats, rats and insects are taking over their spaces. Colombus monkey meat That these rodents and insects interact with humans more make us more susceptible to infection.

According to a UN estimate, a whopping 5 million tons of bushmeat is sold from the Congo River annually.

In Kinshasa for instance, a smoked colobus monkey retails for $22, roughly Ksh 2,200. The delicacy has, however become difficult to come by lately because colobus monkeys have been hunted to extinction.

A trader, who spoke anonymously for fear of being arrested revealed that he gets his stock of monkeys from Ingende and either sells them locally or exports the meat. “I have to be honest, it’s forbidden to send the monkeys. We have to cut their heads and arms off and pack them among the other meats,” said the seller.

Ingende is the same river Muyembe and his team fear will be the breeding ground for a new pandemic.

It is the reason the UN continues to warn humans against the ongoing deforestation and animal trade as it portends disaster in the near future.

Source: Tuko.co.ke