Back to Africa sent 14 pangolin blood samples to the the University of Pretoria’s molecular biology laboratory and identified an unnamed blood parasite.

Many of the confiscated pangolins arriving at Provet Hospital in Hoedspruit become anaemic and it is thought that stress might induce these parasites to destroy the blood cells they occupy causing anaemia. 

More work needs to be done to confirm this we will collect more samples and do more test to confirm the significance of this finding.

Hopefully pangolin lives will be saved as result of this work. Thanks to Dr Debbie English for collecting the samples!