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‘Danger Zone’ Map Says South America Has Most Potential For Health Threats

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According to “danger maps,” South America poses many potential threats for word health, as it is a center of would-be viruses.

The EcoHealth Alliance in New York examined various mammals, the viruses they bring, and how they come into contact with people, the BBC reports. Their findings report that bats carry more potential threats among mammals.

Some of the world’s scariest infections have come from animals, transmitted to humans. The world’s biggest Ebola outbreak seemed to come from bats, while HIV originated in chimpanzees.

The greatest challenge the researchers faced was to predict where the next virus infection would come from. To do this, they studied the 586 viruses that have infected 754 mammalian species, including 188 zoonotic infections, or those that have infected both humans and other mammals.

Some species have been studied more than others, so the researchers used the information they knew to fill in the gaps, and estimate which species harbored viruses that are most likely to infect humans. As a result, they predicted 17 zoonotic infections in all bat species, and 10 in every primate and rodent species.

The team then mapped out the range of species and the infections they had, and came up with where the world’s danger zones are. The hotbed turned out to be South America.

Kevin Olival, one of the researchers, said,

The missing hotspots are different for different groups of mammals in different parts of the world, but the bat signal overwhelms some of the others. But I’m not scared of bats, it’s not the bat’s fault.

He added, “Our take-home message is these diseases are emerging because of the human impact on the environment. Our answer is minimize our contact with wildlife, including through hunting and habitat destruction.”

The researchers hope that this information can be used to determine and prevent the next HIV, Ebola or flu outbreaks. Their next step is to examine birds, which are another source of zoonotic viruses, like bird flu.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

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