Stopping the Next Pandemic at Its Source

In late September 2024, a miner in Rwanda contracted the Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever often transmitted by bats. The deadly virus belongs to the same family as Ebola. Before it was contained, the outbreak killed 15 people, a quarter of those who were infected. Most of the fatalities were healthcare workers.  

In the midst of the outbreak, the Rwandan health authorities contacted a select group of international researchers, including Kristian Forbes, a U of A associate professor of biology. Much of Forbes' work focuses on bats in Kenya and how they transmit diseases to humans. Rwandan officials asked Forbes, along with his collaborators in Kenya and the University of Helsinki, to test bats that could have been the source of the Marburg outbreak. 

"Zoonotic pathogens, those that jump from animals to people, are the source of many of our big human outbreaks," Forbes said. 

Forbes, one of a small number of researchers in the world who studies how bats transmit diseases to humans, has now joined the ZOOSURY project with the University of Helsinki and local partners to grow his work in Africa. Launched by the World Organisation for Animal Health and funded by the European Union, the program will allow Forbes to expand his ongoing work in Kenya and extend it to both Rwanda and Tanzania. 

LEARNING IN AN OUTBREAK 

Janine Mistrick came to U of A to pursue a postdoc in Forbes' lab. A few weeks later, she was traveling to Rwanda to trap bats. 

"This was actually the first time that I was handling bats. I also hadn't worked with pathogens quite as dangerous as Marburg," Mistrick said. 

Her doctoral work was focused on rodents and infectious diseases. 

In Rwanda, Mistrick worked alongside Forbes, U of A graduate student Isabella DeAnglis and the international team to trap and sample the bats. Following the collection of samples and biometric data, they made sure the bats were released safely.  

"It was a well-oiled machine," Mistrick said. "It definitely eased my fears working alongside experts in high biosecurity and bat handling. We all worked as a team to keep each other safe while doing the research." 

The experience showed Mistrick firsthand how her work at the U of A on infectious disease ecology can directly benefit public health around the world. 

A GROWING CONCERN

Historically, many human diseases can be traced to pathogens carried by domesticated animals and rodents. The diseases jumped to humans as agriculture expanded and human populations became larger and more sedentary. Today, bats are a growing disease source for new outbreaks, as loss of their habitats and food sources has brought them closer to people and led to more human exposure to their pathogens. 

"If we can understand the source of human disease outbreaks — from which species, how and potentially when transmission of pathogens from animals to people is most likely to occur — then we can find intervention points to prevent new disease outbreaks in the future," Forbes said. 

By expanding his work in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, the project with the World Organisation for Animal Health can help Forbes discover ways to prevent future pandemics. As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, a disease that begins on the other side of the world can upend our lives here in Arkansas.