BOMBALI VIRUS

Discovery of the Bombali Virus in Bats

The devastation left by an unprecedented Ebola virus outbreak between 2013 and 2016 revealed an urgent need for viral detection, capacity strengthening, and effective risk messaging at all levels. The PREDICT/Sierra Leone team has worked diligently to strengthen viral detection capacity and perform surveillance activities in more than 5 districts throughout the country. For the first time, scientists discovered a new ebolavirus species in a host prior to detection in an infected human or sick animal. The discovery of the Bombali virus in free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone has provided the strongest evidence to date that bats are most likely the natural hosts of these viruses. Published in August 2018 in Nature Microbiology, the discovery of the Bombali virus and the sequencing of the complete genome were shared with people around the world. The government of Sierra Leone announced this finding in July 2018 at the national level, followed by district and community-level dissemination meetings. The discovery, strengthening and virus research work. Despite more than 40 years of research, the true reservoir hosts for this group of viruses is still unknown. But, the discovery of Bombali virus adds to growing evidence that bats are the likely hosts of these viruses.

L-R: PREDICT/Sierra Leone team leading community briefings alongside local chiefs on the discovery of the Bombali virus; behavior risk team engages with Kakamba village community to educate members on zoonotic disease transmission risks; opening ceremony of the PREDICT Findings Briefing

This discovery demonstrated the strength of the mission of USAID’s PREDICT project, which aims to find viruses before they spillover into humans while building local and regional capacity for detection and surveillance. In October 2017, PREDICT/Sierra Leone hosted a 10-day multi-national continuing education training, training more than 20 transdisciplinary staff from Senegal and Guinea at the University of Makeni Sierra Leone on safe capture, sample, and transport of biological specimens from remote locations to diagnostic laboratories. Over the duration of the project, PREDICT Sierra Leone has sampled over 6,500 animals including bats, rodents, livestock, dogs, cats, and non-human primates and collected over 19,000 specimens for testing. Community engagement is an influential aspect of the PREDICT project, in which the Sierra Leone team has engaged over 400 stakeholders at district, chiefdom, and community levels in our operational districts (Kambia, Bombali, Kono, Koinadugu, Western Area rural and Pujehun).