The Marburg virus is as fearsome as its cousin, the Ebola virus. It kills up to nine in 10 of its victims. Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) that inhabit caves throughout Uganda are natural reservoirs for the virus and it can be excreted in urine, feces or saliva. A team of CDC researchers is using GPS trackers attached to male bats to track what they do nightly. Their hope is to learn where they go and how they infect humans, livestock and other animals.
Source: Washington Post, December 13, 2018.(paywall) Link. The Uganda Wildlife Authority, which runs the country’s parks and is helping the CDC, also has an enormous steak in the project’s success. . . . In a meeting with a park warden, Towner and Amman explain how the trackers may show bats traveling to nearby towns in search of fruit. Any fruit the bat bites can be smeared with Marburg; a person, monkey or other animal eating that fruit can get infected.
INSIGHTS: This article is worth one of your three free monthly WaPo views. It features an excellent example of disease monitoring and the beginnings of public outreach needed to initiate behavior change by local residents. Plus, a vaccine may be developed from antibodies produced by Michelle Barnes, a U.S. resident, who acquired the virus during a visit to Uganda and is the first known case and survivor in the country.