(Image: Trent Parke/Magnum)
Hordes of deadly diseases are lurking in bats and sometimes jumping to people. Can we prevent a major pandemic?
PATIENT Zero was a 60-year-old man in Saudi Arabia. He developed a mysterious illness in June 2012 and died 11 days later. His doctor sent off samples for testing, which revealed a new virus related to the one that caused the SARS outbreak a decade ago.
More people soon fell ill with the disease – now called Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS – and so far half of all those infected have died. The crucial question is, where is the virus coming from? The pattern of infections suggested it is harboured by some animal living on the Arabian Peninsula, where all the cases to date have originated or been traced to, and occasionally jumps to people. But which animal is it?
Twenty years ago, bats would have been one of the last on the list of suspects. The only serious human disease they were known to carry was rabies. But since then, a whole host of deadly diseases has been linked to bats, from Ebola and hepatitis C to SARS – and now, perhaps, MERS (see graphic). The MERS virus may have jumped to camels first and then people, but all the evidence so far suggests it is the latest bat virus to infect people. It won’t be the last. “Bats will most likely be the source of another new disease outbreak in the next five years,” says Lin-Fa Wang, who helped identify the animals as the source of the 2003 SARS outbreak. “Although bats are obviously not the only source of new…