Bats - agents that spread many deadly epidemics

Researchers have discovered more and more evidence that bats are the agents of dangerous human diseases such as Ebola, SARS, meningitis .

Even the environment around this animal often outbreaks of disease, but how the virus is transmitted to humans is still a mystery.

Eric Leroy, an infectious disease researcher at the Gabon Medical Research Center, studied three species of bats in Africa and found them linked to the Ebola virus, a very deadly disease. In a series, in which people infected with the virus after a high fever last for days and days, they start bleeding internally.

Until then, it was still thought that viruses appeared from rodents and mosquitoes. But it is the bat that is the "natural lake" containing the germs of disease that no one else knew before.

Recently, scientists in the group of bacteriologist Christian Drosten have demonstrated that bats in Africa carry Hendra and Nipah viruses, which are two agents of meningitis in Australia and Asia. Employees when taking blood from these bats had to wear masks and gloves to prevent infection.

Christian Drosten has even gathered evidence to prove that the epidemic of viruses 200 years ago was caused by bats infecting humans and it is likely that the SARS wave and the flu-like virus of thousands of years have been spread. quickly infected by this road.

Mr. Drosten concluded: "Bats are a major transit station for disease-causing viruses, but we have underestimated them. They carry a wide range of pathogens that have yet to be clarified. "/.