SOUTH AFRICA: Researchers hope to find source of Ebola

JOHANNESBURG, 27 November (IRIN) - Staff at Johannesburg's National
Institute for Virology (NIV) said on Monday that given the resources, they
were confident they could identify the host of the deadly Ebola virus.

The latest epidemic has killed at least 134 people, mainly in Uganda's Gulu
district, 360 km north of the capital Kampala. "We know lots about how Ebola
spreads once it infects humans, but not much about how it is carried between
outbreaks," Professor Robert Swanepoel of the NIV told IRIN on Monday.

Swanepoel, who has just returned from a 14-day research trip to Uganda, said
that tracing the history of the current epidemic had proved difficult, but
that there was evidence that it had been carried into Uganda either from
Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "There are troops recently
returned from the DRC stationed at Gulu, some of whom have recently died of
Ebola," said Swanepoel. He added: "The disease could also have been carried
from southern Sudan, possibly by rebels or gold prospectors who cross into
Uganda all the time." There are three strains of the virus that can infect
humans, Ebola Sudan, first detected in Sudan in 1979, is responsible for the
current epidemic in Uganda.

The NIV has already completed comprehensive research on Ebola, formerly
known as Marburg disease, after the town in Germany where technicians became
infected in 1967 after experiments on Green Monkeys imported from the then
Zaire. "It used to be thought that the virus lived in monkeys, because there
have been documented cases of people falling sick after eating or even
touching monkeys. But we now know that once infected, monkeys die very
quickly from Ebola, so it's unlikely that they host it," remarked Swanepoel.
He emphasised that research was now focussed on rodents and bats. "We're
pretty certain that the virus lives comfortably in bats, but now we need to
find out how and why it spreads to humans," he said.

The NIV called for funding to be made available for a comprehensive research
project into the origins of the Ebola virus. "The current outbreak in Gulu,
where hospital staff are dying along with the sick, shows how deadly this
highly-infectious disease can be in densely-populated urban areas,"
Swanepoel noted. "If we can isolate the carrier, maybe we can eradicate this
killer, or at least learn enough about it to develop a vaccine," Swanepoel
told IRIN. But he added that such a project would have to gather information
in some of the most inhospitable and dangerous places in central Africa,
including eastern DRC, where rebels are fighting to oust President
Laurent-Desire Kabila as well as Uganda's unstable northern border with
Sudan.

There is no medical cure for the Ebola virus, but patients who are rapidly
treated to reverse dehydration have a good chance of survival. One of the
main causes of Ebola transmission is the practice at traditional funerals of
washing the bodies. In a bid to stem the disease, authorities in Gulu have
banned such funerals and have stipulated that the bodies of victims, that
remain contagious for some time after death, are not buried near homes or
water supplies, Swanepoel said.

The World Health Organisation, Ugandan Red Cross and the US Centre for
Disease Control are all currently battling in Gulu district to treat Ebola
sufferers, operate an advanced laboratory and provide health education.
There have been outbreaks of Ebola in Cote D'Ivoire and Gabon, as well as
Sudan Uganda and the DRC. There have been unconfirmed cases of the disease
in Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya began screening Ugandans for the disease at the
weekend.