On the Hunt for Disease X

From Ebola to swine flu to HIV/Aids, viruses borne by animals have caused some of the most devastating epidemics in history. What will come next? In Sierra Leone, Joe Shute joins the scientists working to find Disease X – a virus that is as yet undiscovered, but which could have the potential to ravage populations. Photographs by Simon Townsley

The caves surrounding the village of Gbentu in northern Sierra Leone are held sacred in local culture. Kings have been laid to rest here, and tributes stowed deep within the crevasses. For centuries, in times of death or crisis, tribal elders have tramped through the jungle to hold secret rituals in the darkness.

Tonight, however, it is a dozen or so Sierra Leonean scientists in blue scrubs and gumboots who trudge through the gloom. As we approach, a chorus of nervous-sounding coughs echoes down the line. The head of the village, known as the paramount chief, has instructed us to clear our throats when we arrive at the caves to activate a spell he has conjured to help protect us against the poisonous snakes that reside here.

Ebola: The Natural and... David Quammen Best Price: $2.00 Buy New $6.11 (as of 05:05 UTC - Details) As their assistants (recruits from the village) use machetes to hack a clearing, the scientists put on the ghostly white full personal-protection suits that strike fear into the hearts of so many in this disease-ravaged part of west Africa, which between 2014 and 2016 suffered the worst Ebola outbreak in history – resulting in 11,325 deaths. Mist nets – mesh used to capture bats and birds – are unfurled across the various mouths of the caves. And then, we wait: loitering among belching frogs and whining mosquitoes as the jungle canopy is swallowed into night.

Gradually, plumes of bats rise like smoke from the caves. Those that get caught in the nets snarl and thrash about. Avoiding their snapping fangs, scientists disentangle the bats and pass them to a team seated around a plastic picnic table converted into a makeshift field laboratory. Under torchlight the bats are weighed and measured, and subjected to oral and rectal swabs, with blood samples taken from the veins laced through their wings. The test tubes are placed in a mobile freezer before the bats are released back into the night air; now carrying the scent of chlorine disinfectant intermingled with rich earth.

By the end of the evening the scientists have tested some 21 bats; insect-eating ones from the Hipposideros genus. The hope, if you can call it that, is that one of them may turn out to be harbouring what is a sort of holy grail to virus hunters: the next deadly pathogen that could sweep across the globe. In July this same team discovered an entirely new strain of the Ebola virus among bats captured in the neighbouring district of Bombali. It is gruelling and potentially lethal work. But the ambition prevails that by locating new diseases in the wild they can prevent epidemics before they spread to humans. ‘I realise the seriousness of what we are doing,’ says one of the virus hunters, Edwin Lavalie, a 29-year-old specialist in ecology. ‘But at the same time I know we are contributing to something global. That is where my energy comes from.’

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