Virus Hunt – Preventing the Next Pandemic

Frédéric Singa is a veterinarian at the Dzanga Sangha Nature Reserve in the Central African Republic. He catches bats, takes samples from gorillas, and visits patients, to understand which pathogens are circulating in the forest. But the samples are far from sufficient. Singa would also like to regularly test bushmeat at local markets.

Will he succeed in winning over the skeptical hunters and market vendors? The samples Singa collects end up in a field lab in the rainforest and are also sent to Greifswald, Germany, for further analysis, where Professor Fabian Leendertz at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health maps global risk hotspots. The connection between the Central African rainforest and the health of people in Europe is more direct than most realize.

This film asks whether the lessons from COVID-19 have truly been learned and whether we are better prepared for the next pandemic.