Predict-ing the future
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“Predict’s effort in Malaysia is supported by growing appreciation for the ‘one health’ concept, that is, if we want to have healthy people, we need to have healthy wildlife and livestock. These viruses matter because there are huge economic costs involved. A country’s expenses could run into billions when dealing with an outbreak. There is also impact on trade and travel. This is why there is a real, urgent need for prevention measures against any possible outbreak,” says Hughes.
Case in point: the Nipah virus led to estimated losses of between US$550mil and US$650mil for South-East Asia in 1998 when more than a million pigs were culled and resources had to be invested to control the crisis.
The Predict project is currently active in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah. Wildlife samples have been collected for research and inspection – more than 11,000 specimens from 1,000 animals in Sabah, and over 15,000 specimens from around 1,000 animals in Peninsular Malaysia. In addition to this, Perhilitan’s own sampling consist of 4,900 specimens from more than 720 animals. To date, over 8,300 samples from more than 3,200 animals have been screened for 24 viral families, exposing 44 novel viruses and 26 known viruses.
“Ultimately, Predict Malaysia aims to find out what humans are doing to allow these viruses to spill over. We hope to integrate wildlife disease surveillance into public health infrastructure to create an early warning system in detecting potential zoonotic diseases in domestic animals and humans, while helping to prevent larger outbreaks.
“In Sabah last year, we conducted capacity-building and training sessions for participants across different government departments on aspects such as animal capture, sampling safety as well as sample handling and storage, among others. An improved lab, the Wildlife Health, Genetic and Forensic Laboratory, is also in place. It is equipped to store samples, as well as run extractions and analysis on biological samples for genetic research, forensic investigations and disease surveillance such as that under the Deep Forest project.”
The Deep Forest Project in Sabah studies the impact of land-use change on wildlife diversity and their viral diversity, by sampling species that have the most contact with humans and likely to carry a virus that could infect them.
Hughes says 43% of past emerging infectious diseases are attributable to land-use and agricultural changes, including extractive industries.
“The question now is how much land should be converted and how quickly so, to minimise the risk of an outbreak. This is what the USAID Infectious Disease Emergence and Economics of Altered Landscapes Project aims to determine.
“The global economy could suffer a liability between US$10bil and US$40bil (RM32bil to RM128bil) over the next 10 years just to arrest disease outbreaks from land-use change.” Plans are currently afoot to launch a Development and Health Research Unit based at University Malaysia Sabah, to disseminate findings, tool kits and handbooks about the effects of land-use change.