Uganda Wildlife Authority December/January, 1998--Volume 1 Number 2 Newsletter from Gladys Kalema Veterinary Officer, Uganda Wildlife Authority

Rectal Prolapse Surgery in Bwindi Mountain Gorilla

On Saturday 1st June 1998, I was called to attend to a very sick mountain gorilla in Mubare tourist group called Kahara. The warden-in-charge, Chris Oryema provided transport from Mgahinga where I was, to Mubare and back to Kampala.

On 3rd June I did a health check on the gorilla with Dr. Ken Cameron, Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP) vet. Judging from the reports of the ranger guides and trackers her condition seemed to be improving from when they had decided to-call me out, and the gorilla was a bit more active. I also did not want to rush to intervene because we had seen a similar case in October 1997 for the first time and the prolapse had gone back spontaneously without any treatment, if you remember in the last newsletter (Vol. 1, no. 1).

However as soon as I got to Mgahinga the next day we received a radio message that the gorilla was worse and the prolapse was smelling. So on Saturday 6th June, during the tourist visit I decided that the gorilla was much worse, walking with very great difficulty and there were very many flies in her night nest from the rotting prolapse. So after the tourist visit I intervened. I darted and treated the gorilla, working with a team of 2 ranger guides, 4 trackers and some porters.

Patrick the information clerk assisted, taking photos. The peace corp volunteer Parissa came towards the end. The warden-in-charge also came and got involved. As Dr. Cameron had returned to Rwanda, I ended up having to do both the anaesthesia and surgery on my own, but the field staff, in particular the guide Steven, were very helpful. (This stresses the need for more vets in the UWA VET unit).

I removed the rotten portion of the rectum, and put back and stitched the viable portion to the body wall. At the time the damage to the rectum was so great I removed 10 cm of rectum. I wasn't sure whether Kahara would survive without most of her rectum. Kahara recovered well from the anaesthetic; and was carried to the rest of the group who had already moved a long distance across the river because the operation took 2 hours. The rest of the group accepted her very well., The next day when I went to check on Kahara she was still weak but looked brighter. I received reports the next few days on her condition and she steadily improved. A few weeks later I went to check on her and she was playing and baby-sitting her younger brother, Rugaba. After some time she went tumbling down the hill towards her mother, Kashondwe.

There was a lot of controversy whether or not I should intervene because rectal prolapse do not appear to be human caused, and we may be interfering with the normal natural selection process. The information we shall get from the rectum tissue genetic analysis will guide us for future rectal prolapse cases in the mountain, gorillas. The present intervention policy adopted from MGVP is that interventions are justified if the case is life threatening or human induced. The policy needs to be updated, as there is a gray area regarding life threatening cases. For example in instances where 2 gorillas fight intervening may disrupt group behavior and normal group succession. We would like to update the policy in the near future.

In February, theChimparizees in one of the research groups at Makerere Biological Field Station in Kibale had a respiratory disease and were coughing. They had third disease for 2 weeks, I of the Chimpanzees died, an adult female, Finger, and one of the Chimpanzees was very sick, a pregnant adult female, Antirose. I was assisted by two vets, Dr. Josephine Afema. from Uganda Wildlife Education Centre~(UWEC)andDr.JeanBoscoNizeye from MGUP.

It is important to find out if the disease was human caused. This incident raised a need for training, as the field staff in formed me too late when one female had died and one was about to die. Also the post-mortem on the Chimpanzee was done by some biologists with no training in pathology instead of vets so a lot of valuable information on disease was lost, and will greatly hinder the diagnosis of this type of pneumonia. We also found the Finger's orphan, Pollen was now being looked after by his older sister, Nectar, who lost a hand to a snare in 1995 and had recently got a snare.

However it is very difficult to remove snares from Chimpanzees because the Chimpanzee can go up a tree and fall down and die, and the reaction of the rest of the group can become very aggressive. We are developing a technique for this.

Samples from Joint Clinical Research Centre revealed that the Chimpanzee, Finger, had an E.coli bacterial pneumonia from the tracheal swab. Most likely this is a secondary bacterial pneumonia to a primary viral pneumonia. Samples preserved in formalin were sent to USA to Dr. Linda Lowenstein at University of California, Davis, who also analyses Mountain gorilla samples.

Unfortunately a few weeks later it was found that Pollen died most likely from depression as orphan Chimpanzees often do when their mothers die. Another reason why it is very important to find out what caused the respiratory disease is because the chimps at Jane Good all's place have also had a respiratory outbreak once every few years resulting in some The good news is that Anti-rose recovered and had a baby a few months ago.

I later trained rangers in Kibale and Queen Elizabeth National Park on taking samples from dead animals and when to call out the vet.

In March 1998, 1 was called to rescue a baboon from a classroom in Lugazi High School. This was an orphaned baboon. Someone brought him on a train from Busitema, eastern Uganda and abandoned him on reaching Lugazi. The owners probably got tired of him when he grew too big becoming an adult mate. He had a wire around his waist. The villagers, on seeing him moving around, stoned him.

A wildlife clubs teacher called John Marie, rescued him from the villagers when he was unconscious and nursed him to health. He then became aggressive, so the teacher came to UWA_ I went with the law-enforcement coordinator, Karl Karugaba to Lugazi. We found that the baboon was now in the headmasters office and they were getting desperate. I darted-him-and we carried him to the car while all the school kids were watching. This was a big lesson especially as they had just started a wildlife club in their school.

We then took him to a forest where I found dim he had wounds on the forehead which were healing. We decided to release him because we felt that he was not a problem baboon, and the villagers only stoned him because he looked strange in the village. So the baboon was released in the forest and given a second chance at life.

Venue: BINP and MGNP

Date: January 1998

The health and ecological training workshop held at the two mountain gorilla parks, Bwindi and Mgahinga went very well. It lasted 2 weeks, with I week in BINP and 1 week in MGNP. I am very grateful to the chief park warden, Keith Musana who suggested holding the workshop and found money for it. I am very grateful to International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) who sponsored the workshop. I am also grateful to Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP) and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (DFGF), USA who met their costs and assisted me in training. All except 2 people failed the exam and did not get certificates. I felt that the ranger guides and trackers learnt a lot and will be very useful to me in the field. I also worked closely with the peace corp volunteers and the wardens for tourism, and the secretary at BINP who typed up a lot of material for the course.

A survey of TB and other diseases in Cape Buffalo of Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Last year we did a survey done on Tuberculosis and other diseases in the buffaloes of Queen Elizabeth National Park. Kruger National Park in South Africa is having a problem with a lot of Buffaloes dying of TB and wanted to see what the situation in Uganda was as a survey was done in the late 1960s by Dr. Michael Woodford who established the prevalence of TB in the Queen Elizabeth National Park Buffaloes -Working together with Dr. Roy Bengis, State Veterinarian of Kruger National Park and Dr. Michael Woodford from IUCN Veterinary Specialist Group, we immobilized 42 Buffaloes and got blood samples for zoonotic (disease spread from animals to man), notifiable and other important disease in Buffaloes. We tested for, TB Rinderpest, Brucellosis, The ileriosis and throat probang samples for Foot and Mouth disease. Hopefully the results from this survey will help Kruger national park in managing the disease in their Buffaloes; and will also assist the wardens of Queen Elizabeth national park to manage the buffalors and other animals in the park, which includes the domestic cattle that infringe on the park boundary and are an important source of infection for the Buffhloes and vice versa. In addition to the survey Drs. Bengis and Woodford did a good job of training me and three rangers, Onen, Tom and Joseph in Buffalo immobillsations, which was -great.

We received the results this year and they showed that TB is still present in the Buffalo population and is in 21.4% of the random sample compared to 10% of the random sample in 1968-69. The survey also found Brucellosis in 2 Buffaloes, and Foot and Mouth Disease. All these disease are of concern to UWA and farmers as they can be spread between cattle and buffalo.

As a follow up to this survey I plan to go with the education wardens and talk to the farmers about what we found and how these diseases can affect the cattle inftinging on the park boundary, and how our buffaloes also need to be protected. This may make it easier for the education warden to prevent cattle coming into the park boundary, with scientific evidence as back up.

The UWA Veterinary unit received some publicity in Uganda . In print media, Choice Magazine did an article and so did Nice newsletter for school children which were well received. On Uganda Television, Victoria Wilson Darrah did a show entitled "Take a walk on the wild side" on her "Eye on Uganda" programme which people really liked.

The Unit also received some more publicity in England, as the film shown last year produced by Jane Marie Franklyn "Gladys The African vet" on BBC1 in October 1997, was nominated for an award in the Wild Screens series on wildlife documentaries, which is great.

I held two veterinary policy workshops to develop a wildlife Veterinary policy of Uganda. There hasn't been a wild life Veterinary unit since the 1960s and no policy has ever been set up This Involved all people working with UUJR which included Mokerere University, UWEC, Government Veterinary Services, National Drug Authority, Uganda Veterinary Association, Pon African Rinderpest Campaign, Wildlife Life clubs of Uganda, Uganda Wildlife Society (former East African Wildlife Society (among others).

'The workshops went very well. I was assisted by Dr. Alchord Kock, former Veterinary Adviser to Kenya Wildlife Service.

I gave talks at Greenhill Academy, Makerere University 4th year Veterinary Students at their Wildlife Course, Uganda Veterinary Association Conference, International Women's Organization who also gave me an honorary membership.

I was in USA for one month, where I first attended a primate anaesthesia course ran by Safe Capture International in Boston, sponsored by IGCP. then I started giving lectures to Veterinary students, I gave the same lecture to all the universities entitled "Challenges of a wildlife Veterinarian in Uganda". I want to Tufts University, Virginia Tech University, Washington State University and University of California Davis. I also went to St. Louis zoo. The talks went well and were very well received. In St. Louis Zoo I also gave a public lecture entitled "An overview of Wildlife in Uganda with a particular emphasis on Veterinary input, and including some of the past and present political factors that have affected conservation". Onto Omaha, Nebraska to an annual zoo and Wildlife Veterinary meeting where many Veterinarians presented papers. I gave a presentation on "An outbreak of Scabies in mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park" and a poster on" Management of a rectal prolapse in a free-ranging mountain gorilla in Bwindi" which went well and were well received.

My colleagues from Rwanda, Dr. Jonathan Sleeman and Dr. Tony Muclakikwa also gave talks on gorilla anesthesia and faecal parasites in the mountain gorillas of Rwanda which also went very well.

In addition to all this I went to my nephews' school, Wilmington Montessori, Delaware where I talked about my work. Willie Kalema is ten and his classmates are all in the same age group. I enjoyed giving it and got asked many questions. It was a lovely surprise to get back to Uganda and find 22 lovely thank you letters from the teacher, and all the students in the class.

While I was a way, I asked vets Dr. Jean-Bosco Nizeye of MGVP and Dr. Ludwig Siefert of Makerere University Veterinary faculty to attend to any emergencies if animals fell sick.