Part of the problem may be certain animal contacts, such as eating "bush meat" (mentioned in the article, also discussed in the Laurie Garrett book). Maybe a campaign against those practices could be worthwhile

> Maybe a campaign against those practices could be worthwhile

It's very difficult to convince people to not eat food when the alternative is starving.

Yep.

Chance of sickness or certainty of starvation.

There are campaigns against eating bush meat. And campaigns to get hunters to reduce their contact with uncooked fluids.

Stuff like this:

http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2006/Spring/africa/news/virus_hunt...

This one is more focused on conservation:

http://bushmeat.org/

I expect there is lots more.

I read once that there is a ritual of bathing the dead that causes the spread of diseases like this in certain cultures.

Descriptions from early outbreaks included rituals of evacuating all undigested food as part of the burial process.

Sounds interesting, where did you read this?