MASS ANIMAL DIE-OFF: Mysterious Mass Death Of Monkeys In Central America - 40 Howlers Dead In Recent Months, With Relatively Full Stomachs And No Signs Of Trauma; Scientists Are Baffled; Could This Be Related To Zika Or Other Mosquito-Borne Diseases?!

A dead howler monkey found in the woods in southern Nicaragua.© Paso Pacifico

February 12, 2016 - CENTRAL AMERICA - Scientists are investigating the mysterious die-off of dozens of monkeys in Central America, including the possibility that they have contracted Zika or another virus that could be passed to humans.

In recent months, around 40 howler monkeys have been found dead or dying in the tropical rainforests of Nicaragua. The animals have all had relatively full stomachs and no obvious signs of trauma. Experts fear there may be many more cases that have not been reported.

"Wild animals die off all the time, but it is really unusual to see this many deaths in such a short time with no apparent reason," said Kim Williams-Guillen, a conservation Ph.D. who has been researching in Nicaragua's jungles since 1999. "I have never seen anything like it."

"These deaths are worth investigating, not just from a conservation standpoint, but from a public health standpoint. It is very important we get to the bottom of this."


WATCH: Nicaragua Howler Monkey Die-off Signals New Viral Outbreak?

Primates are highly susceptible to mosquito-borne diseases, and outbreaks among them could be a precursor to the spread of disease among humans, although scientists are careful to warn that this leap remains rare.

Complicating the mystery is the fact that howler monkeys are immune to dengue but are highly vulnerable to yellow fever. Yet Nicaragua has been declared free of that disease for years.

What is less clear is how the primates will respond to Zika and chikungunya, both of which are related to yellow fever and have just arrived in the Western Hemisphere in the last couple of years.

Nicaragua has reported 29 cases of Zika so far. Meanwhile, chikungunya has infected more than 100,000 people across Central America since first arriving there in 2014.

Among the numerous unknowns is whether howler monkeys would even exhibit symptoms if they became infected with either virus.

"It is just not something that has been researched yet, how or whether they would affect primates," adds Williams-Guillen, who is conservation director at Paso Pacifico, an environmental nonprofit working in Central America's Pacific jungles.

The group is now coordinating with scientists from the University of California, Davis, to come up with a definitive diagnosis for whatever it is that is killing off the monkeys.

In addition to the possibility of a virus, the researchers will also probe other factors that might be at work, including drought and other environmental variables.

The first challenge is to take hair, skin and other samples from a recently deceased animal and then transport it to Davis.

Red Howler Monkey babies are seen at the Hacienda Miraderos forests in the Municipality of Armenia, Antioquia, Colombia, December 14, 2015.© Fredy Builes/Reuters

Liliana Cortez Ortiz, a University of Michigan researcher and member of the International Primate Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said this kind of unexplained die-off of apparently healthy animals is unusual, but not unprecedented.

"Any instances in which primates are dying from unknown causes is potentially a concern for humans as well," she added. "We simply don't know why this is happening and we need to find out."

Despite their cute appearance and size, typically weighing around 17 to 20 pounds, howler monkeys are actually the loudest land animals on the planet.

That's because they have large, hard, hollow throats, which they use to project roars that can travel for miles across the jungle. To the untrained ear, they sound more like a big cat than a fluffy monkey.

But now that they are apparently suffering from a mystery disease, they also face a new threat, warns Cortez Ortiz: humans.

"Now that we know they are dying, it is possible that local people may become scared and take matters into their own hands, killing the monkeys deliberately out of fear," she said.

"It is very important that they message gets out in Nicaragua that that is not the way to handle this, and these monkeys are not a danger to humans." - PRI.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: United Nations - MILLIONS COULD DIE From Future Global Pandemic Unless World Health Organization URGENTLY Reforms!

February 9, 2016 - HEALTH - A future global epidemic could result in millions of deaths according to a new UN report, which would be far worse than the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. The study also urges the World Health Organization to reform in order to be ready to combat future crises.

The report, entitled “Protecting Humanity from Future Health Crises,” is particularly relevant following the outbreak of the Zika virus in South and Central America. The study has been critical of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people.

The UN panel is urging the body to reform in order to prevent future outbreaks, which could have dire consequences, with the report stating that if a highly pathogenic influenza virus was to surface, it could “rapidly result in millions of deaths,” as well as causing “social, economic and political disruption.”

Worryingly still, the report, which has been posted online in advanced, unedited form in the UN’s Daily Journal, mentions that this is “not an unlikely scenario.”

“The high risk of major health crises is widely underestimated, and … the world’s preparedness and capacity to respond is woefully insufficient. Future epidemics could far exceed the scale and devastation of the west Africa Ebola outbreak,” the chair of the panel, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete stated.

The world’s attention is now focused on the Zika virus, which has been spreading from Brazil. Countries in the region have been caught off guard due to a lack of understanding about the disease, which has been linked to thousands of cases of brain damage in new born babies in the region.

A WHO spokeswoman told Reuters that the organization sprang into action following the outbreak of the virus, with the body working together to try and combat its effects.

She added that the WHO "is fully committed to urgently reforming our emergency work to address all emergency health risks and events in a predictable, capable, dependable, flexible and accountable manner.”

Among the recommendations from the UN panel was the need for the WHO to build a new Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response, which "must have real command and control capability, access to specialized human and operational resources to execute a health response.”

The report also mentioned that there needs to be greater coordination in fighting global outbreaks and is "convinced that there is no substitute for having a single global health leader" and that "the World Health Organization should become this leader.”

Since the turn of the century, the world has witnessed a number of epidemics, which include four major outbreaks of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Saudi Arabia and South Korea, the pandemics of H1N1 and H5N1 influenza, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The report says that these are all a “stark reminder” of the threat posed by emerging communicable diseases to humanity.

Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust charity has welcomed the moves put forward by the panel, while also stating that there is a general consensus that action needs to be taken and that organizations are learning from the mistakes that were made during the Ebola outbreak.

"Epidemic and pandemic diseases are among the greatest of all threats to human health and security, against which we have for too long done too little to prepare," he said, as cited by Reuters.

"After four inquiries into the preventable tragedy of Ebola, there is now a strong consensus about what must be done. The WHO’s leadership and member states must make 2016 the year of decision and act now." - RT.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: Meliodosis And Zika - After Ebola, Two Other Tropical Diseases Pose New Threats!

Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014.
REUTERS/2Tango

January 11, 2016 - HEALTH - A little-known bacterial disease may be killing as many people worldwide as measles, scientists said on Monday, while a mosquito-borne virus known as Zika is also raising global alarm.

The spread of Ebola in West Africa last year shows how poorly-understood diseases can emerge and grow rapidly while researchers race to design and conduct the scientific studies needed to combat them.

Researchers in the journal Nature Microbiology called for a bacterial infection called meliodosis, which is resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, to be given a higher priority by international health organizations and policy makers.

At the same time, scientists at Britain's Oxford University warned that a virus known as Zika, which is carried by mosquitoes and has caused a major outbreak in Brazil, has "the potential of rapid spread to new areas".

Zika was first detected in Africa in the 1940s and was unknown in the Americas until last year, but has now been confirmed in Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay, according to public health officials.

It is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which thrives in tropical climates and can also carry other diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya.

Thousands of people in Brazil have been infected by Zika. While the virus is not thought to kill, health authorities there last year linked it to a surge in babies born with microcephaly, restricted head growth that seriously limits a child's mental and physical abilities.

Trudie Lang, professor of Global Health Research at Oxford University, said Zika - for which there are currently no known treatments - was a cause for concern.

"It's definitely becoming an issue, but there is so little research that we just don't know the size of the potential threat," she told Reuters.

She urged the international research community to act now to learn more about the virus, about how it is spread, and about how scientists might develop a treatment or vaccine against it.

"We need to learn from what happened with Ebola," Lang said, referring to the devastating epidemic of that viral fever that swept through three countries in West Africa last year and caused more than 28,600 cases globally.

The vast majority of Ebola cases and deaths were in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where more than 11,000 people were killed, according to data from the World Health Organization.

"We need to galvanize the research community now and move as quickly as we can from doing observational work (on Zika) to carrying out proper scientific research," Lang said.

In the Nature study on melioidosis, scientists said the bacteria that causes it, Burkholderia pseudomallei, is commonly found in soils in Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, but can be spread to non-endemic areas via imports of infected animals.

"Melioidosis is a great mimicker of other diseases and you need a good microbiology laboratory for bacterial culture and identification to make an accurate diagnosis," said Direk Limmathurotsakul, a microbiologist and assistant professor at Thailand's Mahidol University, who co-led the study.

"It especially affects the rural poor in the tropics, who often do not have access to microbiology labs, which means that it has been greatly under-estimated as an important public health problem across the world," he added.

The researchers estimate there are 165,000 melioidosis cases a year in people, of which 89,000 will be fatal. These tolls are similar to those caused by measles - a viral infection that can be prevented with a vaccine - and far greater than dengue fever.

The study found that the highest melioidosis risk zones are in South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, including all countries in Southeast Asia and tropical Australia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America. There are also risk zones of varying sizes in Central America, southern Africa and the Middle East. - Yahoo.