Biogeography of the Ebola-virus disease

Abstract

Prevention is the most powerful approach for managing the emergence of infectious Diseases. It allows, on the one hand, avoiding damages in human populations, and on the other hand minimizing the efforts needed for fighting disease once it has occurred. Prevention involves providing means for fight in risk areas, planning vaccination campaigns and assessing travelers, for which having predictive maps able to locate hotspots (i.e. areas where the risk of disease is higher than usual) is extremely helpful. In the case of the Ebola-virus disease, the involvement of factors based on the fauna, the forest and the meteorology, which could favour the risk of occurrence of new cases, opens opportunities to developing this kind of maps. The team of Biogeography, Diversity and Conservation of the University of Malaga, in the Animal Biology Department, is currently leading research for the production of predictive maps focused on the Ebola-virus disease. The delimitation of favourable areas for the presence of the virus in the wild has already provided a geographical context for virus transmissions from the fauna, as well as a list of mammal species whose potential for hosting the virus should be investigated. In the areas surrounding the tropical rainforests of central and western Africa, a two-year long high-transmission-risk period in locations where dense forests have been lost can be inferred. One of the factors that could explain this link between Ebola-virus transmission to humans on the risk of disease, could constitute the basis for developing tools that allow predicting where and when, in both the short and the medium terms, there will be increased risk of Ebola-virus transmission to humans. 

from wildlife.