Hemorrhagic

It's not a new problem. The AIDS virus, HIV, is now known to have originated from a similar virus in African chimpanzees. An estimated 30-million people have died of AIDS since the early 1980s. Other human diseases with animal origins include SARS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever and West Nile encephalitis.

Conservation through Public Health is also working to educate communities about preventing other illnesses, including Ebola, a deadly hemorrhagic disease spread through touching the blood and eating the meat of an infected animal. She says Ugandans do not usually eat uncooked bush meat but that neighbors from the Democratic Republic of the Congo do.