Gorilla Doctors

Susa Group female Rwandarushya with her six-month-old baby, still healthy.

Twelve days after the first reported case, I made another monitoring visit. The silverbacks were clearly improving, including the chief. Kurira ate bamboo shoots hungrily, having finally changed locations. Rwandarushya’s six-month-old baby cautiously crawled away from his mother. She pulled him right back. I tried not to think of this baby as a future patient. But the outbreak wasn’t even half over.

Byishimo, one of the Susa twins, sick with a runny nose.

On this day, 18 of 39 gorillas were sick, including Byishimo, one of Nyabantidore’s two four-year olds, the first mountain gorilla twins known to survive. Later, I replayed a short stretch of video I’d taken. The sound of multiple animals coughing made me uncomfortable, and a range of what-ifs ran through my head that night.

Though we understand a lot about respiratory illness in people, gorillas, and chimpanzees, we have plenty of unanswered questions. We don’t—and cannot—know precisely how far droplets of moisture-containing viruses travel after a cough or sneeze, or how long these tiny particles remain infectious. (The answers depend on the shape of the microbe, temperature, wind, humidity, and the type of virus.) One thing is certain: by visiting wild animals who share susceptibility to human diseases, we introduce risk.

Many of Rwanda’s younger habituated mountain gorillas frequently approach human visitors.

The risk of disease transmission is one of the main reasons there are rules in place for visiting gorillas. Unfortunately, they’re not consistently observed or enforced. Some guides, researchers, and tourists obey the visitation rules; others don’t. We’ve just been through a series of workshops to restate and explain them—again. They’re simple and easy to follow: only healthy people are to enter the forest, with clean boots, rain gear, and hands; everyone keeps the recommended distance from the animals, currently seven meters; if a visitor coughs unexpectedly, he or she should put on a mask and leave the group.

The gorillas don’t know the rules, of course. In Rwanda, they’ve become so habituated to people that the seven meter-rule is difficult to maintain. The gorillas often walk right up to and past visitors, sometimes touching them. At MGVP, we believe the responsibility for following the rules falls on each individual person (certainly not on the gorillas!) We humans have created the risk in the first place, and we’re equally capable of taking appropriate action to minimize it, like moving a step back.

View of heavily cultivated farmland near Parc National des Volcans, Rwanda.

Some scientists believe respiratory outbreaks naturally occur among free-living chimps and gorillas and that intervening to treat or confirm the diagnosis is not warranted. But when people are the primary reservoir for a virus that infects the great apes—and can kill them, as shown by the chimp researchers—I’m not sure we can call such infections natural. Humans live closer to the great apes than ever before. Our proximity to them, coupled with shrinking natural habitats, increases the risk.

When I meet eco tourists on the trail, I introduce myself and the vet project. Most are pleased to know the gorillas have doctors, and they want to know more. Some say simply, “Thank you for doing your work” and ask how they can help. My answer: enjoy your visit, and, if you have time, find us on the Web and make a donation. Just search mountain gorilla vet or gorilla doctors!

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 7:01 am filed under About MGVP, Inc., Monitoring Visits and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.