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Ebola kills bush meat business in Malawi

A woman sells monkey meat in Guinea
A woman sells monkey meat in Guinea

He has been poaching for nearly 30 years, surviving attacks from wild animals and armed game rangers. Poaching and selling bush meat might be illegal in Malawi, but the man nicknamed Chiwinda (a marksman) in Binyu Village near Majete Game Reserve in Rumphi calls it “my life, my business”.

To take this as the poacher’s bragging rights is to insult him by hasty conclusion. His voice is sorrowful. The future looks bleak due to the Ebola outbreak which has killed over 8 000 4 500 people in Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mali and US, according to the World Health Organisation WHO).

He looks downcast, shaking his head in disbelief as he gazes at his handmade gun—a muzzle loader—and wire for illicit snares hanging on the wall. For him, the crude weapons have not only been a source of delicacies; bushbucks, duikers, warthogs and buffaloes which fetch high prices when sold to “big bosses at Rumphi Boma”, some 60km away—but also cash.

Now he kills slightly more than his household requires.

“We have been brought up eating bush meat as a special dish, but maybe we start searching for alternative ways of life,” says the small-scale farmer who supplements his income by killing game in the no-hunting zone that is Vwaza Marsh.

Ripples of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa are slowly killing the illegal business as some customers are shuning bush meat.

“Since we started hearing about bush meat and Ebola on radio, some customers, especially those who pay up to K1 500 ($3) a kilogramme, have not been forthcoming. They now shun bush meat in preference for goat meat and beef,” he says.

The poacher led the interviewer to two of his regular customers who affirmed “tender and tastier meat” from Vwaza is becoming scarce and “we now think twice before buying” due to news of Ebola, a disease first diagnosed in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

No infection has been recorded in Malawi where the National Parks and Wildlife Act prohibits sales of bush meat. Last year, Minister of Health Jean Kalilani asked her Sadc counterparts to jealously safeguard the Southern African region from the deadly virus.

In West Africa, fears of Ebola are weaning communities from bush meat. According to the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the term covers all “meat that comes from wild animals captured for consumption including bats, rats, duikers and non-human primates such as monkeys.

It is often smoked, dried or salted and considered a special source of animal protein to people in the remote locality near parks.

In a deserted Agbogbloshie market, a one-time haven of bush meat in Accra, Ghana, unrelenting trader Yaa Kyerewaa got graphic in an interview with CBS: “Bush meat is healthy. I usually eat it as a special food on Sundays.

“We have been consuming for years only for it to be made unpopular by these needless rumours flying around. No one wants to buy our products now. It is sad.”

Across Vwaza Marsh, poaching is high. Since July, game rangers have confiscated 17 firearms, uprooted 322 snares and arrested 32 illegal hunters.

But far from celebrating Ebola’s potential to turn poachers off protected animals, workers who patrol the 1 000km2 jungles fear for their lives as well.

The parks and wildlife workforce is petitioning hard for training in Ebola detection and prevention, arguing their job entails constant interaction with bush animals and travellers from all parts of the globe, including hit nations.

“Six years ago, we were sidelined in terms of training for bird flu, yet, Vwaza is a haven for birds. Now, we have also had no training in Ebola though daily contact with the animals and tourists put our lives at risk,” parks and wildlife assistant Stein Phiri read out the petition to the Ministry of Information, Tourism and Culture during a tour in October.

Principal Secretary Elsie Tembo promised to work with the Ministry of Health to close the knowledge gap “because Ebola emanates from wild animals and infected people”.

Information, Tourism and Civic Education Minister Kondwani Nakhumwa expressed surprise at why nobody in government is talking about safeguarding game rangers from Ebola.

“We will look into this,” said the minister. “But let us also consider training people in protecting temselves rom catchig HIV and Aids as well because most of infections are happening among mobile workers like you [game rangers].”

Ebola is a viral infection transmitted through contact with blood and other body fluids from infected persons—except it’s a high-fatality condition with about 90 in 100 infections culminating in death.

But does interaction with wild animals and eating bush meat really put lives at risk?

The BBC quotes Melissa Leach, an anthropologist at the University of Sussex, as saying this media coverage is not only unhelpful, but dangerous.

“It’s not a disease spread by eating bush meat. As far as we know, it originated from one bat to a child in Guinea. Subsequent to that, it’s been a human-to-human disease. People are more vulnerable by interacting with infected people than by eating bats,” she argued.

Scientists trace the current outbreak in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea, US and Mali to December 6 2013 when an infant, nicknamed Child Zero, died.

Bush meat, which is popular across Africa, is believed to be the origin of the spate since the victim’s family in south-eastern Guinea, where some hunt and eat fruit bats which carry the virus.

Just how the virus ‘spills over’ to human beings is not clear, Professor Jonathan Ball, a viralist at University of Nottingham, tells BBC’s Inside Science.

“There is often an intermediate species involved such as chimpanzees, but evidence shows people can get the virus directly from bats,” he argued.

Yet, WHO warns that, as rare as it is, infection from wild animals is possible—a reason animal rights campaigner Tennyson Williams sees a silver lining, a time to act on the smuggling and consumption of wild animals.

Trends show all infection after Child Zero spread through human-to-human contact and WHO recommends community engagement to prevent and control infections.

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