![]() Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by harbouring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans such as Ebola, HIV and dengue.Ī 3D print of a spike protein and a Covid-19 virus particle. “We used to love the forest, now we fear it,” he told me. Some died immediately, while others were taken down the river to hospital. They said that everyone who cooked or ate it got a terrible fever within a few hours. Villagers told me how children had gone into the forest with dogs that had killed the chimp. There, I found traumatised people still fearful that the deadly virus, which kills up to 90% of the people it infects, would return. ![]() It took a day by canoe and then many hours along degraded forest logging roads, passing Baka villages and a small goldmine, to reach the village. I travelled to Mayibout 2 in 2004 to investigate why deadly diseases new to humans were emerging from biodiversity “hotspots” such as tropical rainforests and bushmeat markets in African and Asian cities. ![]()
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