While bats have been villainized and targeted in recent decades as hosts and vectors for viruses such as SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), bats are keystone species critical to ecosystems, and provide vital services including pollination and pest control for human food crops. Bats and people have an interdependent relationship and evidence is increasing to indicate human encroachment sets the stage for spillover by impacting bat ecology and health.
It is not understood exactly how these processes affect bat health because monitoring efforts are underfunded and under-prioritized. This is a significant issue because normal ‘healthy’ parameters must be established prior to identifying diseased populations. As it pertains to bats, scientists are attempting to understand complex physiology of disease and mechanisms by which bats serve as reservoir hosts without possessing a true understanding of what a normal healthy bat looks like.
The Bat Health Foundation leads disease transmission mitigation efforts in a way that bolsters public health, ecosystem health, and bat conservation. Our solution will establish normal bat health parameters for the more than 1400 species of bats by leveraging internal expertise and engaging with our scientific community to collaborate and contribute. Improving harmonization of bat scientific disciplines will allow us to work synergistically to protect the well-being of humans, bats and the ecosystems we share.