And as it has been during past Ebola outbreaks, bush meat is once again suspected to have been the bridge that caused the deadly disease to go from the animal world to the human one. All it takes is a single transmission event from animal to human — handling an uncooked bat with the virus, for example — to create an epidemic. The term bushmeat, also called wildmeat and game meat, refers to meat from non domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds hunted for food in tropical forests.
The volume of the bushmeat trade in West and Central Africa was estimated at 1-5 million tonnes per year at the turn of the century. In this video, the reporter gets into details of wide practice of bush meat eating and its effect on spread of virus.
