Fruit bats may be linked in RP Ebola cases

Agence France-Presse|A group of foreign health experts have arrived in the Philippines to see if fruit bats may have infected pigs with a non-lethal form of the Ebola virus, a health official said Monday.
Dr. Eric Tayag, the head of the Philippine health department's national epidemiology center, said the experts will be looking for the source of the Ebola-Reston virus that infected thousands of pigs earlier this year.
Tayag said the experts were looking at "fruit bats (to see) if they are the source," of the virus.
However he said studies would "take a long time" before the source of the virus is found.
He did not identify the experts or say where they came from.
According to the World Health Organization, the strain infecting the pigs is not dangerous to humans, unlike the four deadly Ebola subtypes found in Africa.
The strain was first found in laboratory monkeys exported from the Philippines to the US in 1989.
So far, six farm workers and butchers have been found with the antibodies to Ebola-Reston and scientists are still trying to determine if the six caught the virus from pigs. It is also not clear how the pigs caught the virus.
If a link between the pigs and the workers is proved it would be the first time humans have contracted the disease from pigs.
The six infected workers remain healthy and have not developed the disease said Tayag.
Earlier this year, the government quarantined two farms where the virus was detected and slaughtered around 6,000 pigs to prevent the spread of the Ebola-Reston virus.