Wednesday, March 12, 2003
By Christian Tsoumou, Reuters
BRAZZAVILLE, Congo Republic � The deadly Ebola virus has killed 100 people in the remote forests of Congo Republic and wiped out nearly two-thirds of the gorillas in a reserve.
"We have reached the fateful figure of 100 dead," Congo's Health Minister Alain Moka said on Tuesday at a ceremony to accept donations to help fight the outbreak.
The latest Ebola epidemic to hit the central African country struck in January in the dense forest region of Cuvette-Ouest about 440 miles north of the capital Brazzaville.
Ebola is passed on by infected body fluids and kills between 50 and 90 percent of its victims. It starts with a high fever and headache and can lead to massive internal bleeding.
"The government has already spent 300 million CFA francs (US$507,000) to put in place the logistics needed to help the stricken people, but the state alone cannot help," Moka said. "We must have the support of everybody and the international community."
There is no known cure for Ebola, and authorities in central Africa have battled the disease by cordoning off affected areas and trying to stop locals from eating primates.
Scientists believe this outbreak was triggered by the consumption of infected monkey meat. Bush meat is a staple among remote forest communities and deemed a delicacy in many cities.
Monkeys, chimpanzees, and gorillas started dying in large numbers towards the end of last year, and primatologists say the impact has been devastating on the Lossi park in Cuvette-Ouest.
At an Ebola conference in Brazzaville last week, primatologist Bermejo Magdalena said that gorillas had been disappearing at an alarming rate where she works in the Lossi sanctuary.
"In the sanctuary of about 1,200 gorillas, we are now down to just 450 gorillas. We have recorded the disappearance of 600 to 800 gorillas," she said, adding the outbreak could spread to the nearby Odzala park and might then contaminate forests in Gabon. "If Odzala is also contaminated by the epidemic, that's nearly 20,000 gorillas under threat. That's very serious, catastrophic," she said.
Ebola killed 73 people in Gabon and the same area of Congo in an epidemic from October 2001 to February 2002, but experts fear this outbreak is more virulent.
The disease takes its name from a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo where Ebola was discovered in 1976. The worst outbreak was there in 1995 when more than 250 people died.
Despite scientists' efforts to change villagers' eating habits and burial rites, which can involve handling the internal organs of corpses, many believe occult forces are at work. Four teachers accused of casting a spell to cause the latest Ebola outbreak were stoned and beaten to death in February.
Source: Reuters
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Massive Great Ape Die-Off in Africa -- Ebola Suspected
source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0205_030205_ebola.html
National Geographic News
Updated February 6, 2003
A catastrophic die-off of lowland gorillas and chimpanzees at the very heart of their range in central Africa has been reported by scientists.
Scientists working with the ECOFAC program (an EC-funded regional forest conservation program for central Africa) in northern Republic of Congo said today that they were witnessing what appears to be a massive decline in ape populations in the Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary (about 100 square miles/250 square kilometers) situated about 10 miles (15 square kilometers) to the southwest of the famous Odzala National Park (5,250 square miles/13,600 square kilometers).
The region is thought to contain the majority of central Africa's lowland gorillas because of its isolation, the presence of several protected areas, and large undisturbed areas of habitat types particularly favored by gorillas.
"Spanish primatologists Magdalena Bermejo and Germain Ilera, who have been studying gorillas at Lossi for the past nine years, report that the eight families (139 individuals) they have been monitoring since 1994, have disappeared from their study area of 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) in the sanctuary," ECOFAC said in a news release today.
The first deaths were reported on November 26, and in mid-December scientists from Gabon's Centre International de Recherches Medicales de Franceville (CIRMF) collected samples from four gorilla and two chimpanzee carcasses and confirmed the presence of Ebola virus in all six cases.
Since then Bermejo and Ilera and their teams of trackers have been combing the area for signs of great apes and have found only one gorilla group of six individuals on the eastern edge of their study area.
Two of the missing gorilla families were habituated for tourism viewing. They were the first lowland gorillas ever to be habituated in central Africa and generated much needed revenue for the local villagers, ECOFAC said.
The Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary was created at the request of the villagers when they realized that the long-term benefits from gorilla viewing far outweighed any short-term benefits from hunting. The disappearance of these families is an enormous setback for the villages, ECOFAC said.
"This most recent outbreak at Lossi suggests that the devastating effects of the Ebola virus on great ape populations appears to be moving eastwards. The forests in and around the Odzala National Park are known to contain the highest known density of lowland gorillas in Africa."
Scientists from Rennes University working with ECOFAC have documented up to 47 families of gorillas visiting a single three-hectare (7.4-acre) forest clearing in the north of Odzala.
The epidemic appears be spreading from west to east. Scientists from the World Wildlife Fund working in Minkebe National Park in northern Gabon documented the disappearance of great apes from an estimated area of 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) sometime between 1990 and 2000, and suspected that the Ebola virus might have been the cause. Three Ebola epidemics were recorded in villages in the Minkebe area between 1994 and 1996.
Between November 2001 and June 2002 at least 80 people died during an outbreak of the disease in the cross border area of northeastern Gabon and northwestern Congo (Mekambo-Ekata-Mbomo-Kelle). During this epidemic, scientists from ECOFAC, CIRMF, and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) also documented deaths of great apes in the same area and the Ebola virus was confirmed from one carcass. In several cases it was established that handling fresh ape carcasses that they had found in the forest had contaminated humans.
No one knows how the disease entered the first human or ape, said William Karesh, head of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Field Veterinary Program. "But we do know that the virus is subsequently spread from infected animals to other animals and from infected people to other people."
Karesh said that there was no known way to contain the epidemic among animals. "When people are infected we can educate them about the risk of touching or consuming dead or sick animals, and if they are sick, to immediately let authorities know so they can be isolated before they infect other people.
"But for animals, at this time, we have to let the disease run its course in the forest because there are no known treatments besides supportive care for infected humans."
Karesh said it was not known whether infected humans could be spreading the disease to apes.
"This has not been the case as far as we know, but sick individuals who refuse to remain in quarantine and move to other areas will take the disease with them and infect the people they come in contact with.
"There is a chance that if they were seriously ill and unable to continue traveling through the forest, in theory they could be found by chimpanzees or gorillas who could, again in theory, contract the disease from the infected human or their body fluids.
"Humans definitely are the major source of spreading the disease among humans. The typical Ebola outbreak involves one or maybe two or three people contracting the disease from some source in the forest and then infecting family members and neighbors in a chain that can grow to hundreds of people.
"Similarly, our understanding of the social nature of chimps and gorillas suggests that the same happens to them. One or a few chimps or gorillas become ill and then infect the other members of their family group. As the group is dying, some individuals infected later may be left to wander off and join another group or may be found dead by a member of another family group, allowing this cycle to continue."
Named after the Ebola River, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the site of an outbreak of the virus in 1976, Ebola is an RNA virus of African origin that causes an often fatal hemorrhagic fever.
Copyright 2003 National Geographic. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Medical team to investigate possible Ebola outbreak
By Associated Press, 2/6/2003 15:02
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) After 16 suspicious deaths, medical experts headed to northern Republic of Congo on Thursday to investigate a feared outbreak of Ebola.
The six-person team from the health ministry and the World Health Organization were traveling to the towns of Mbomo, Kelle and Yembelangoye. The mission was prompted by reports of an illness ''consistent with hemorrhagic fever,'' WHO spokesman Iain Simpson said in Geneva.
National health director-general Dr. Damase Bozongo confirmed the deaths 12 at Kelle and four at Mbomo. ''Right now we're not ready to confirm that the deaths are a result of Ebola, but the suspicion is strong,'' Bozongo said.
Ebola is one of the world's deadliest viral diseases, causing death through massive blood loss in up to 90 percent of those infected. The disease spreads through bodily fluids though not the air.
Ebola killed 43 people in Republic of Congo and 53 others in Gabon between October 2001 and February 2002, WHO said. That outbreak began with an infected gorilla.
Monkey and gorilla meat is often eaten by the people of Central Africa. Authorities urged villagers in the area to avoid bush meat during the last Ebola outbreak.
WHO says more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a nearby region of Congo.
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Wednesday, 5 February, 2003, 15:29 GMT
Ebola outbreak feared in Congo
Ebola is highly contagious and deadly
By Pascale Harter
BBC, Brazzaville
In the north of Congo-Brazzaville, 16 people have died in a suspected outbreak of the Ebola virus. The Congolese authorities say they are extremely concerned that the virus might spread.
There is no cure for Ebola and little is known about the virus, which causes its victims to die from internal haemorrhaging.
The Congolese Ministry of Health says 16 people are known to have died so far, but communications with the villages of Kele and Mbou, 800 kilometres north of Brazzaville in the Region of Cuvette West, are difficult.
Doctor Joseph Mboussa, Director in the Ministry of Health, says a villager has been dying every few days since the outbreak began on 4 January, and already the death toll could be much higher than 16.
Gorillas wiped out
The authorities were first alerted to a possible outbreak when a clan of gorillas in the Cuvette West Region began to die.
Tests carried out on the bodies confirmed that the gorillas had died from the Ebola virus, and the disease has now claimed more than 80% of the gorilla clan.
Medical professionals are at great risk of contracting Ebola
The Ebola virus is easily spread just by skin contact with an infected primate or person.
Doctor Mboussa says this makes the virus particularly difficult to contain, as Congolese funeral rites dictate that the body of a deceased person be washed by the family before burial.
The current outbreak is believed to have been caused by villagers eating primates which were already infected with Ebola.
Staple food
An emergency team of health ministry workers was scheduled to leave for the region on Wednesday to investigate the outbreak and try to contain it, following delays caused by a shortage of petrol and funds for the trip.
Ebola experts working for the World Health Organisation in Libreville and Geneva also expect to leave soon to investigate the outbreak.
Some years ago in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, then President Mobutu Sese Seko adopted a controversial policy of putting an infected village in quarantine.
The Ebola virus was contained but the entire village was wiped out.
The Congolese health ministry has so far asked local inhabitants not to travel, but the authorities are hopeful they will not have to resort to such drastic measures.
The forestry ministry already has several teams in place trying to make locals aware of the dangers of eating primates, but they admit it is a losing battle in a region where bush meat has formed a staple part of people's diets for centuries.
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'Ebola spell' teachers stoned
BRAZZAVILLE, Congo (Reuters) --Congolese villagers have stoned and beaten to death four teachers accused of casting an evil spell to cause an outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease that has killed nearly 70 people, a local official said Friday.
The outbreak of Ebola in the districts of Kelle and Mbomo near the central African country's northern border with Gabon is thought by scientists to have been caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat.
But many locals believe occult forces are at work.
"In Kelle, people continue to believe that the Ebola disease is a spell that has been cast on them by witches, and four teachers accused of being the cause of the disease have been beaten and stoned to death," said Dieudonne Hossie, a local official. He did not say when the teachers were killed.
"We call on the people of Kelle to be calm. It is the Ebola virus which is raging in the area. It is not an evil spell, it is a scientifically proven virus," Hossie, who was speaking on the official Radio-Congo, said.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation confirmed the outbreak of haemorrhagic fever was Ebola, and put the death toll at 64. State radio put the death toll at 68 on Friday.
This is the second Ebola outbreak in little more than a year in Congo's remote northwest. Kelle and Mbomo have been placed in quarantine, schools and churches have been closed and people are banned from entering or leaving the area.
Ebola, which is passed on by infected body fluids, kills 50 percent to 90 percent of its victims through massive internal bleeding, depending on the strain of the disease.
Hossie said those responsible for the deaths of the four teachers would be brought to trial. He also said that in the capital Brazzaville, 700 km (440 miles) from the affected area, people from Kelle had drawn up lists of suspected witches to be killed.
Ebola killed at least 73 people in Congo and Gabon in an outbreak from October 2001 to February 2002. That epidemic was also linked to the consumption of infected primates.
The disease takes its name from a river in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Ebola was discovered in 1976. The worst outbreak was in that country in 1995 when more than 250 people died.
Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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