Forbes – Ebola Outbreak Shows The Dark Side Of Mother Nature

It was an amber August night in Western Uganda in 2007. As the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I suited up in full biosafety gear to observe a team of our top disease detectives as they tried to find the source of a deadly outbreak. Crouching, I followed the team, all of us in heavy-duty protective suits, into a cave filled with more than 400,000 bats.

A small cluster of people in the community had become ill with Marburg virus, which causes a deadly fever very similar to Ebola infection. Bats have long been the prime suspects in the mystery of hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg and its close cousin, Ebola. The newly reopened cave seemed linked to the outbreak, but the CDC team needed proof. That meant trapping bats to check them for the virus. As we entered the cave, the bats were absolutely everywhere. One of them landed on my face shield and looked me right in the eye, sizing me up. That proved to be a sobering gaze into the dark side of Mother Nature.

Read more – Forbes