Pathogen and disease detection under the PREDICT and PREDICT-2 projects as well as other research initiatives have generated a strong evidence base on the drivers of zoonotic diseases. In Liberia, the finding of Ebola virus antibodies in a bat provided evidence that Ebola is circulating in wildlife in the West Africa region and signaled that there are ongoing spillover risks requiring public health attention.
Involvement and partnership of international and national institutions ensured best practices in research activities. The National Public Health Institute provided important leadership to support outreach on the significance of the Ebola finding. Another key factor was the model practices demonstrated by the sampling team, involving safe handling and sampling and attention to animal welfare, which itself helped to increased awareness of these aspects by observant communities.
In the past, communities in Liberia have distrusted foreign researchers and do not typically have direct access to the findings from research activities. Communities were aware of the sampling activities around their villages; by seeing Liberian scientists involved in this work with their own eyes, they were more receptive to the findings.
WAB-Net brings together stakeholders from diverse sectors and backgrounds to participate in uniquely detailed and thorough capacity-building and hands-on trainings. Field teams consisting of ecologists, government officials representing health and environmental ministries, and students and academic faculty are trained to carry out research while keeping themselves and the bats safe. A bat ecologist will spend several weeks each year in the field teaching the team how to capture, handle, sample, and release bats with biosafety considerations woven throughout each step.
A bat ecologist familiar with the unique aspects of the taxonomic group and biosafety practices works in collaboration with regional project partners to design standardized field protocols and subsequently implements the field trainings in each country. This uniquely hands-on approach to training field teams ensures the standardization of field protocols across cultures and disciplines in the region.
WAB-Net serves as the central coordination point for these trainings across the Western Asia region. There is a wide diversity of stakeholders participating, including in their backgrounds and areas of expertise. WAB-Net facilitators learn from the individuals they’re training, creating more culturally relevant lessons. By bringing lessons from one country to another, WAB-Net can enable conversations and collaboration over areas of shared interest, furthering partnerships that would have otherwise been politically difficult to build.
WAB-Net takes a One Health approach in conducting collaborative research and training programs in West Asia, bringing regional expertise that are otherwise siloed in sectors of human, animal, and environmental health. Samples taken from bats across the region are screened for known and novel coronaviruses; human behaviors that could present a spillover risk are identified. WAB-Net serves as the unifying point of virology, bat ecology, and public health initiatives in the region. By coordinating conversations between experts in diverse fields of study, opportunities for novel research questions, more comprehensive agendas, and better-informed policy recommendations are created and implemented.
EcoHealth Alliance, with experts on global One Health research and policy, serves as WAB-Net’s facilitators and instills a One Health lens on all of its work. Previous experience with bringing together experts from diverse fields and finding commonalities across topics enables them to effectively carry out multi-disciplinary endeavors in a politically volatile region.
As demonstrated by the COVID-19 global crisis, mitigation efforts after a spillover event occurs often are more costly to both public health and the global economies. A proactive approach to pandemic prevention is made possible through WAB-Net’s work of monitoring both potentially zoonotic viruses in bat populations and human behavior. WAB-Net’s focus on both research objectives and training efforts enhances biosafety throughout all steps of the research process. The collaborative nature of the One Health approach creates more comprehensive and effective recommendations for public health, conservation efforts, and disease management.
Throughout the first months of 2020, there was an overwhelming amount of confusion and stress surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. In the face of this drastically changing reality, the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group was able to come together quickly and efficiently to identify researchers’ needs, gather relevant information, and create an essential set of guidelines. A rapid mobilization of the global network of great ape specialists was able to translate the publication into multiple languages, disseminating this crucial tool to people working in the field across multiple regions.
The Primate Specialist Group’s active and participatory membership was key to their successful prioritization of work in the face of an unprecedented and deadly pandemic.
As the COVID-19 crisis swept the globe many people sought further purpose in their work. The members of the Primate Specialist Group were motivated by the sense of urgency gripping all walks of life and wanted to take action in a positive way. These guidelines were essential not only for people to safely continue field work, but also for the members looking to find meaning during a particularly bleak time.
There was existing guidance on how to observe and interact with great apes while protecting both their health and that of humans. While previous guidelines addressed other respiratory diseases, there were no COVID-19 specific protocols as research and information were only just beginning to become available. The working group gathered intelligence from a wide array of sources, ensuring they were capturing the most up to date and relevant details, and synthesized it into a cohesive, clear document.
The guidelines previously published by the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group, and the group’s passionate memberships, were key enabling factors to the working group’s ability to quickly create COVID-19 specific protocols. Being able to draw directly from peer-reviewed resources streamlined the process and allowed the group to confidently create new guidelines despite the lack of COVID-19 information available at the time.
The working group drew knowledge from beyond just great ape primatologists. While their expertise was a guiding factor throughout the process, inviting other people to contribute ensured a diversity of knowledge bases were captured in the guidelines. The peer-reviewed COVID-19 information available was still lacking at the time, and broadening the contributing pool of experts lead to a more comprehensive and useful set of guidelines.
