A family of lethal viruses that has leapt from bats to humans in Australia and Asia may also pose a threat in West Africa, where bats are butchered for meat, scientists reported Tuesday.
Known as henipavirus, the family has two main members, Hendra and Nipah, which came to notoriety in the 1990s.
They have been blamed for rare but worrying outbreaks of encephalitis and respiratory illness among domestic animals and humans in remote Australia, south and southeast Asia.
Like Ebola, henipavirus has a natural reservoir in fruit bats, which are immune to the virus but can pass it on to humans who come into contact with their blood, saliva or droppings.
In some henipavirus episodes, mortality rates have been greater than 90 percent.
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