From: "John P. Woodall" 
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 20:37:22 -0500 (EDT)
Subject: PROMED: Ebola - Cote d'Ivoire (2)

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 16:42:27 +1000
From: Erwin Jackson 

EBOLA - COTE D'IVOIRE (2)
=========================
[see also: Ebola - Cote d'Ivoire archive.950521]

Source: Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press writer
- -------------------------------------------------

Chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast get the deadly Ebola virus every other
autumn, but doctors have never had the money to study them for clues about
the baffling disease that kills people quickly and horribly.

Now the United Nations' World Health Organization is starting the first
global system to contain emerging diseases like Ebola fast when they infect
people, and eventually to prevent them through such research as a
now-pending study of those chimps.

"This is a new way of acting for WHO," said Dr. David Heymann,
who describes the emerging disease division he started Oct. 1 as
the agency's "first kind of SWAT team effort."

He has persuaded the French government to donate a scientist
to study those Ivory Coast chimps, the only species other than
humans in which Ebola has ever been found. Ebola outbreaks killed
chimps in the falls of 1992 and 1994, also infecting a primate
handler -- meaning those chimps are in regular contact with
whatever animal harbors and spreads the virus.

The CDC didn't have the funds to study the Ivory Coast's
Ebola-stricken chimps.

"Now's the time to be in there," said Heymann, who is lobbying
other countries to help the French scientist's pending chimp
study. "It's the choice between putting money into prevention or
spending it later when people are sick."
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