UWI professsor suggests: Study ‘wild meat’ for virus risk

LOCAL wildlife such as manicou, lappe and quenk, consumed as “wild meat” should be studied for the potential risk of passing on viruses to humans, said University of the West Indies professor of veterinary virology, Christopher Oura.

He was responding to a question during a UWI virtual symposium on Sunday on the impact of covid19 on health systems. He was asked about the consumption of wild meat in the Caribbean and whether there should be any concern (about the spread of viruses from these animals).

“I think we should. We need to understand a lot more about the pathogens and viruses that are present in our wildlife,” Oura said. He said with surveillance in wildlife and understanding what is present in wildlife, risk assessments can be done and experts can understand more about the risks of viruses possibly coming to humans.

“A lot more work needs to be done in this area in the Caribbean.” Oura, a member of the UWI Covid19 Task Force which brings expertise to address the clinical aspects of the virus, presented on the question, “Are wildlife a public health problem?”

He said 70 per cent of new and emerging diseases have come through animals and ecological changes of the last ten to 20 years has changed the probability of exposure to these viruses.

He said the situation has become worse due to human beings and activities such as deforestation, forest encroachment, and living in close association with animals, usually due the poverty. He said, in some countries, there are wild wet markets (where living animals are processed upon demand) which are very unsanitary and have unsafe methods of butchering. “We need to stop these practices.” It is believed that the covid19 virus came from a wet market in Wuhan, China last December. Oura recalled during the SARS outbreak (2002-2004) wet markets in China were closed but then two to three years later they were reopened.

“And here we are now again. We’re carrying our extremely poor sanitary practices, blood all over the place, we’re eating bats, we’re eating and butchering all sorts of animals including chimpanzees and apes in Africa. So we’re really setting ourselves up so these viruses can jump easily from wildlife from humans.”

He said if viruses can be caught earlier, when it is in the bat or intermediate hosts, it can be stopped early. “Don’t blame the bats. Bats haven’t caused this pandemic,” he stressed, saying wild animals have been carrying viruses from time immemorial, but it is human encroachment into the wild, that is the problem.