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Ebola killing large number of Gorillas and Chimpanzees in Gabon - Villagers told to stay calm
Reuters ^
| 12-12-01
| Antoine Lawson
Posted on 12/12/2001 3:05:44 PM PST by Neuromancer
LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Reports of dead gorillas and chimpanzees in a central African forest are being investigated for links to an outbreak of the deadly Ebola (news - web sites) virus, health authorities in Gabon said Wednesday.
Ebola is thought have killed 10 people in the remote Mekambo district in the northwest, and one more is seriously ill. The disease causes up to 90 percent of its victims to bleed to death in a matter of days and has no known cure or vaccine.
Gabon's authorities have put four villages under quarantine and appealed to people in the sparsely populated country of 1.2 million to remain calm. Research Minister Andre-Dieudonne Bere said in an official statement that the government had been told of ``the discovery in the forest of the corpses of many great apes, gorillas, chimpanzees and so on.´´ ``The government has sent a team to carry out investigations with the aim of determining the origin and extent of this epidemic,´´ he said. Blood tests on a human patient confirmed that the disease was indeed Ebola, the World Health Organization (WHO) said at the weekend.
The disease, which is transmitted by contact with body fluids, killed at least 66 people in a 1996 epidemic in a nearby area of Gabon. It was first known to have struck the country in 1994, when it left more than 20 dead.
Where the virus hides in the wild before breaking forth to kill humans and other primates remains a mystery.
Searching for the cause of the first outbreak in 1994, investigators were told of the deaths of many apes in the forest nearby, but found none. In the 1996 outbreak, 13 people fell ill after butchering a dead chimpanzee they had found.
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Please remember that these primates are victims of the Virus and not the vector.
To: Neuromancer
Ebola is probably transmited through spores like anthrax. Pretty scary.
2
posted on
12/12/2001 3:07:39 PM PST
by
lavaroise
To: lavaroise
Bat are the #1 suspect - as of this time.
To: lavaroise
bat=bats
To: Neuromancer
If bats are the vector, what is the mode? Contact with guano?
/john
To: kd5cts
Unknown John - we can't even prove bats are the vector. It is just a few facts that seem to point that way.
Some of the best minds in Virology are trying to sove this question, and still no real answer.
The Stanford Thesis
To: Neuromancer
The saving grace is that if the outbreak is hot enough it burns itself out quickly.
To: lavaroise
Ebola is probably transmited through spores like anthrax. Pretty scary
I'm sorry, but this is just a completely UNTRUE statement. Ebola is a virus not a bacteria.
To: Neuromancer
Bats have NEVER been found to be serologically positive for the Virus. Most experts have ruled them out.
To: RightWhale
Amen.
Because Ebola is so hot - it burns itself out in these remote regions.
Our fear, of course, is that one of the ill will make their way into a large urban hospital. If the victim is unaware of their condition - many bad things can happen before the outbreak can be contained.
To: RightWhale
Ebola, while VERY deadly, is not as easy to catch as you think. The biggest reason for tranmission in Africa is nosocomial infections (those happening in the hospital from the re-use of needles), from people all sharing the same drinking supply, or unprotected sex. Ebola is no smallpox.
To: Neuromancer
Interesting thesis. I wonder where/what the resevoir is. Since it is so quickly lethal, I understand that outbreaks are self-limiting (without human intervention). Hmmmm.
I have fears of a virus adapting its vectoring to modern human technology.
/john
To: realpatriot71
I thought you could catch it from dead bodies.
To: AppyPappy
Many tribes over in Africa wash the dead for burial as well.
To: AppyPappy
I should say, that after an amount of time the dead body is no longer infectious. It's not like the body is contagious forever.
To: realpatriot71
What we find in the original outbreak is that the Virus is transmitted to family members from contact with the corpse.
Later in the course of the outbreak nosocomial (a localized or systemic condition that results from adverse reaction to the presence of an infectious agent(s) or its toxin(s) that was not present or incubating at the time of admission to the hospital) may become a factor.
To: realpatriot71
MODE OF TRANSMISSION:
By direct contact with infected blood, secretions, organs or semen, or by the aerosol route; contaminated syringes and needles facilitated virus transmission noscomially in outbreak
INCUBATION PERIOD:
2-21 days
COMMUNICABILITY:
Communicable as long as blood and secretions contain virus (isolated 61 days after onset of illness); secondary infections occurred in 5% of case contacts in Zaire and 10-15% in Sudan
To: realpatriot71
Virus is usually recovered from acute-phase sera and has also been found in throat washes, urine, soft tissue effusates, semen and anterior eye fluid, even when the specimens were obtained late in convalescence. It has also been regularly isolated from autoptic material, such as spleen, lymph nodes, liver and kidney but rarely from brain or other nervous tissues.
To: Neuromancer
I am aware of all this
ad nauseum
Thanks for taking the trouble though :-)
To: kd5cts
vector=internet (or a whopper)
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