Gorilla Doctors

Category: About MGVP, Inc., Field Procedures, Monitoring Visits | Date: Jul 13 2009 | By: Dr. Jan Ramer for gorilladoctors

Dear All,
I am leaving the gorilla doctors project team as of the end of July 2009. Dr. Jan Ramer, also an American zoo and wildlife vet, will be taking my place as regional field veterinary manager, and I know she will be blogging.  So please stay tuned for Jan’s updates.  She arrives in Rwanda in early August.

In the meantime, I’ve got several stories I haven’t had time to write about.  I’ll post these over the next few weeks.

So what am I doing next?  My chief concern is to continue to promote and practice one-health medicine.  From my work with the gorillas and people of central Africa, I’ve learned what it takes to make this approach work.

For example, the health of the mountain gorillas is tied to the health of everything in their ecosystem, including humans.  Healthy gorillas mean healthy ecotourism, which in turn translates into a more prosperous economy and improved health for the local people.  The key is to recognize that funds need to be invested in every aspect of a one-health program.  The gorillas need doctors; their forest needs to be better protected.  The people who live near the gorilla parks need better medical care; they also need better education about avoiding the spread of diseases by practicing good personal hygiene; they need sustainable agriculture and improved farming practices.  As long as people are poor and hungry, they’ll sneak into the forest to set snares or cut wood for charcoal.  Obviously, no one institution can meet all of these needs.  We must work together.

As I see it, the way to achieve a healthy planet is to meet the needs of all species, including humans.  By making decisions that benefit more than one species, we can create a healthier environment for all.

In the short term, I’m going to be a college professor!  I’m sure I’ll learn as much as my students, since all this will be new to me.  For the 2009-2010 academic year, I’ll be serving as visiting Associate Professor at Brown University, where I’ll teach two seminar courses for undergraduates.  The first is “Comparing Primates: From Lemurs to Gorillas,” the second “One-Health Medicine: Connecting the Health of People, Animals, and the Environment.”  I’ll also be looking for opportunities to work in the field as a wildlife vet—and writing a new book.

Lastly, I have a new blog called “Animals in Peril” that will be launched on Discovery Channel’s website on Aug 1.  There I’ll report about current events in wild animal health.  I hope you’ll all check it out, and that it can somehow be linked to Wildlife Direct.

Meanwhile, here’s my next post.  Part 1 of a two-part photo essay focused on interventions—the gorilla patients on whom I did hands-on work along with various members of the MGVP team.

Icyi under anesthesia on November 23, 2006 in Pablo Group, RW. 

The trackers found Icyi alone, wet, cold, and weak, hunched at the base of a tree.  This three-year-old had been separated from her mother a week earlier after something (probably poachers) scared her family group and caused it to disperse.  Without her mother’s milk and body heat, Icyi could not keep up.  This was my first intervention; I was working alongside Dr. Chris Whittier, the outgoing regional field veterinarian. We treated her that day and the next for dehydration and hypothermia, eventually carrying her all the way back to the main group.  Sadly, her mother showed no interest and the infant died that night.  This case taught me a lot—including the painful fact that our patients are often very sick by the time we get to them. 

Igiti asleep, showing her chronic skin wound on February 15, 2007 in Susa Group, RW.

Igiti, an adult female, is in good health except for a persistent skin wound on her belly.  She was the first wild mountain gorilla I darted in December 2006, with a course of antibiotics.  The problem got better, but it didn’t go away.  She’s a very wary gorilla, which makes photographing the wound almost as difficult as getting a dart in her.  We haven’t intervened further, mostly because Igiti picks constantly at this wound—a behavior we cannot to change in a wild animal.  Whatever the inciting cause, she keeps the wound open.  Now she’s pregnant again, and we’re hoping the new baby may present enough of a distraction to break the picking habit.

Kwakane with a right ear infection on December 28, 2006 in Susa Group, RW.

Kwakane, a young silverback, had a green discharge oozing from a wound near his right ear, or possibly directly from his ear.  Since I was the only vet in the forest that day—everyone else was off for Christmas week—and it was almost noon by the time we found him, I decided to start by treating him immediately with antibiotics.  When the flying dart hit him in the rear; he reacted as if he’d been stung by a bee and ran away.  The next day, he was actively foraging for food and looked remarkably better.  We decided to wait a few more days before going ahead with an anesthetic intervention.  We haven’t seen him since.  I learned a second painful fact: you can’t track a patient’s health when he disappears.

Umurava with eye injury on February 3, 2007 in Pablo Group, RW.

Umurava, the third-ranking silverback in Pablo Group, had been in a fight, suffering a torn eyelid on the right side of his face.  A few days later, he fought again, this time with an aggressive lone silverback.  Then Umurava disappeared.  When the trackers finally found him a week later, he was near death, gasping for breath.  He’d suffered a deep wound to his neck, and had severe pneumonia.  This was my second anesthetic intervention (Icyi had been the first), and once again, I found myself trying to help a dying animal.  I anesthetized him, but had little hope that my treatments would work.  Even if I’d been working in a modern veterinary clinic rather than on the forest floor, his chances would have been slim.  He died late the next day.

Lucy darting Gitebe with antibiotics on March 2, 2007 in Pablo Group, RW.

One morning, the Karisoke Research center staff found a trail of blood behind Gitebe, a young female.  She seemed fine otherwise.  Her signs were consistent with abortion, which we believed was due to natural causes.  This would have been her first infant.  Ten days later, she suddenly appeared very weak.  By the time we reached Pablo Group, it was already late afternoon. Thinking that a uterine infection was most likely, we made the same plan as for Kwakane: treat, and if no improvement, intervene fully.  Gitebe didn’t mind her darts, and rejoined the group.  Thirty minutes later, there was an interaction with another group of gorillas and her group fled.  Gitebe was never seen again.  We think she simply couldn’t keep up.

Puck on March 24, 2007, three weeks before her death from cancer in Pablo Group, RW. 

Puck was a former study animal of Dian Fossey.  She was also a favorite among those of us who visited Pablo Group.  We’d been monitoring her for a variety of odd symptoms, including a chronic cough triggered only when she was eating.  I wondered if she had indigestion or, much worse, heart disease.  But she still had amazing stamina.  One day near the end of her life, we tracked the group up to 4200 meters on the top of Visoke.  I was exhausted and my legs felt like rubber.  Meanwhile, Puck ate ravenously. Three weeks later the trackers found her near death.  She died under anesthesia and at necropsy we found the most amazing cancer.  It had encircled her heart and invaded her spine.  She was one tough gorilla.

Magayane recovering from snare injury to her right middle finger on September 10, 2007 in Kwitonda Group, RW.

Magayane was my first snare removal case.  Though the snares are set for antelope, not gorillas, they still cause a big problem.  If the snare is left in place, the affected limb swells, and lack of circulation often leads to life-threatening infection.  After Magayane got the middle finger of her right hand caught, she did what most gorillas do—tried to pull away—which only cinched the wire tighter.  We waited for the group to calm down and went first thing the next morning to anesthetize Magayane and remove the snare.  Unfortunately, the damage was already done.  Although we removed the snare and gave her antibiotics, she eventually lost two-thirds of the finger.

Nzeli crawling on her knees due to severe foot injuries on February 2, 2008 in Bwenge Group, RW.

Nzeli, an adult female, was injured when she chose to transfer from her home group to be with a lone silverback, and then back again.  She returned with deep lacerations on the palms of both hands and the soles of both feet.  The best she could do was crawl slowly on her knees.  Given the risk of infection, the fact that she was a breeding-age female, and the concern that she would be left behind by the group, I decided to treat her with one dose of penicillin.  The effect was dramatic.  Though she couldn’t bear weight normally for a month, she clearly felt better and was able to hobble much faster.

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