Ebola expert warns MPs about risk of virus reaching Britain
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Thursday July 3, 2003
The Guardian
Ebola fever, one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humans, could reach Britain from Africa, MPs will be told at a meeting today.
Peter Walsh, an expert on apes and the ebola virus from Princeton University, New Jersey, will advise members of the environment, health and foreign affairs select committees that British airports with flights from Africa should look out for the disease, and that public health officials should be warned about how to deal with it.
The disease has reached epidemic proportions among chimpanzee and gorilla populations in Gabon and the Republic of Congo and is transmitted to humans who eat this bushmeat or come into contact with the dead animals.
Ebola is fatal for between 50% and 80% of those infected. The virus first causes fever and then cells burst. Internal organs bleed and disintegrate causing death within seven to 10 days. Six outbreaks have occurred in remote parts of Africa in the last 10 years and 1,200 people have died even though the World Health Organisation was able to completely isolate the remote populations that were infected.
Since then the disease has continued to spread among primates and is crossing the Congo. It is expected to reach Cameroon soon. Dr Walsh, who studies chimps and gorillas with the disease, says conditions in the region have changed, which might make containment of future outbreaks impossible.
Logging and oil exploration have created roads into the remote regions and commercial hunters are killing chimpanzees and gorillas from the infected areas and selling the meat in large cities where there is demand.
Previously it was only local people who hunted the primates and villages were so remote that everyone had died without passing on the infection.
"As in the Sars epidemic, a few cases arising in the capital of Congo, Brazzaville, or Libreville in Gabon, could cause panic. People could take the first plane, car or train out to escape."
Dr Walsh said that as a scientist he did not want to be alarmist and it was impossible to quantify the risk, but it was real. "It is certainly more than 2% and less than 50% of it getting here, but where in between I am not sure."
The fear was that one infectious person boarding a plane in Gabon and coughing could turn into 100 people with Ebola by the time the plane touched down at Heathrow, he said. "When they all go off to their towns and villages, that could easily turn into a number of outbreaks and perhaps 100 dead. I am confident that once the public health officials got to grips with it - as with Sars - it would be containable, but 100 lives is a lot."
A second possible route of infection is the direct import of bushmeat into the UK. As with foot and mouth, Ebola virus can survive after an animal is dead. Quantities of illegally imported meat are frequently seized at Heathrow and by public health officials in city centres where it is sold to people of African descent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,989809,00.html
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Thursday July 3, 2003
The Guardian
Ebola fever, one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humans, could reach Britain from Africa, MPs will be told at a meeting today.
Peter Walsh, an expert on apes and the ebola virus from Princeton University, New Jersey, will advise members of the environment, health and foreign affairs select committees that British airports with flights from Africa should look out for the disease, and that public health officials should be warned about how to deal with it.
The disease has reached epidemic proportions among chimpanzee and gorilla populations in Gabon and the Republic of Congo and is transmitted to humans who eat this bushmeat or come into contact with the dead animals.
Ebola is fatal for between 50% and 80% of those infected. The virus first causes fever and then cells burst. Internal organs bleed and disintegrate causing death within seven to 10 days. Six outbreaks have occurred in remote parts of Africa in the last 10 years and 1,200 people have died even though the World Health Organisation was able to completely isolate the remote populations that were infected.
Since then the disease has continued to spread among primates and is crossing the Congo. It is expected to reach Cameroon soon. Dr Walsh, who studies chimps and gorillas with the disease, says conditions in the region have changed, which might make containment of future outbreaks impossible.
Logging and oil exploration have created roads into the remote regions and commercial hunters are killing chimpanzees and gorillas from the infected areas and selling the meat in large cities where there is demand.
Previously it was only local people who hunted the primates and villages were so remote that everyone had died without passing on the infection.
"As in the Sars epidemic, a few cases arising in the capital of Congo, Brazzaville, or Libreville in Gabon, could cause panic. People could take the first plane, car or train out to escape."
Dr Walsh said that as a scientist he did not want to be alarmist and it was impossible to quantify the risk, but it was real. "It is certainly more than 2% and less than 50% of it getting here, but where in between I am not sure."
The fear was that one infectious person boarding a plane in Gabon and coughing could turn into 100 people with Ebola by the time the plane touched down at Heathrow, he said. "When they all go off to their towns and villages, that could easily turn into a number of outbreaks and perhaps 100 dead. I am confident that once the public health officials got to grips with it - as with Sars - it would be containable, but 100 lives is a lot."
A second possible route of infection is the direct import of bushmeat into the UK. As with foot and mouth, Ebola virus can survive after an animal is dead. Quantities of illegally imported meat are frequently seized at Heathrow and by public health officials in city centres where it is sold to people of African descent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,989809,00.html