INSIGHTS ALONG THE PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY| November 30, 2005
Forest Food: The Health of Wild and Domestic Food Animals in Central African Forests AMY E. PETERSON, DVM, Research Fellow, Department of Epidemiology, JHSPH (Presenter)
NATHAN D. WOLFE, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, JHSPH, JH Cameroon Project SUMMARY Small-scale domestic animal production coupled with hunting for bushmeat supports many people in rural central Africa. In some villages the hunting and butchering of wildlife provides the most important source of protein intake. In a prior study, it was found that people have extensive contact with bushmeat in the rural villages and that butchering of wild animals has led to a number of human infections with wild animal viruses. Based on the results of this research, education materials are being developed and meetings are being held in rural village sites in conjunction with local Peace Corps volunteers. The focus in these meetings is to gain the trust of the hunters, and to demonstrate an interest in their way of life an their future health and well-being. Once a rapport is established, individuals are encouraged to avoid the hunting and butchering of non-human primates based on this research, and to be cautious during any hunting and butchering activities to avoid the possibility of infections. This research also has significant policy implications, reinforcing laws banning the commercial hunting and sale of chimpanzees and gorillas (most significant risks to humans in terms of disease). Further conservation and sustainability can be gained by shifting the focus in village sites away from bushmeat as the main source of protein. Small-scale domestic animal production can provide protein with a decreased risk of animal to human disease transmission while also increasing the chances of wildlife conservation and decreased human-wild animal contact. There are programs being developed in Cameroon to address issues of storage and refrigeration in areas with little or no access to consistent power sources. These programs may increase village willingness to rely on domestic animal rather than on wild animal consumption. However, there remains a potential risk of disease transmission from wild ungulates to domestic animals and further to humans, additionally, domestic animal disease can affect wildlife populations. Wild ungulates are particularly important to the communities in the study sites given their ease of capture with wire snares and their local abundance. While they have been largely overlooked in terms of their disease potential, determining the impact of wild ungulate disease on domestic animals as well as the impact of domestic animal diseases on wild animal populations is extremely important for the well-being of people in forest villages. The project hypothesis, that wild animal populations in our study sites have infections that may cause disease in domestic animal populations and vice-versa, will be tested by identifying disease causing microbes in these animal populations and identifying the potential pathways of microbial exchange. Further it will locally promote means of reducing microbial exchange. The research will be undertaken using three methods: questionnaires and observations, domestic animal blood samples and wild animal blood samples. Increased domestic animal production may help to decrease reliance on the harvesting of wildlife in rural villages, and is a much more sustainable source of protein. However, the introduction of new diseases as a result of a change in the current balance of the human-domestic animal-wildlife relationships could prove even more devastating to local wildlife populations, causing negative progress instead of improvement and conservation. A better understanding of existing disease dynamics in local wildlife and domestic animal interactions will help to develop programs with long-term sustainability and positive impact in these rural village sites. PRESENTER BIOGRAPHY Amy E. Peterson received a degree in veterinary medicine from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in 2001. She has worked in the field as a veterinary medical officer as part of a joint U.S./UK deployment to investigate the UK Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic of 2001, and spent two years in both large and small animal clinical practice. Amy came to Johns Hopkins in 2003 to study comparative medicine and pathology. Amy started her PhD in the infectious disease epidemiology program in 2004. She is currently investigating the epidemiology of malaria in primate populations in Cameroon. Her research interests include wildlife conservation medicine, sustainable agriculture in developing countries, human health at the human-animal interface, and understanding the factors that drive disease emergence from animal reservoirs into human populations. Nathan D. Wolfe is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. He received his doctorate in immunology and infectious diseases from Harvard University in 1998. Dr. Wolfe combines methods from molecular virology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to study the biology of viral emergence. He plans to use his Pioneer Award to work in regions of high biodiversity with subsistence hunters who will collaborate in establishing a sentinel surveillance system to monitor the entry of novel viruses into the human species--a significant threat to global public health. He will also utilize new technologies for detecting unknown microorganisms. A recipient of a Fullbright fellowship, Wolfe was named one of the "Brilliant 10" by Popular Science magazine in 2005. |
