The battle against Ebola

1In 1976, a Belgian physician, Peter Piot, identified a new virus in a blood sample taken from one of his compatriots who had died in Zaire, formerly known as the Belgian Congo. Taking its name from a river located in the contaminated area, the Ebola pathogen killed 300 people that year. It was the first known outbreak of Ebola, but by no means the last. Since then, in this part of the world, the virus has re-emerged for no apparent reason and at irregular intervals, deep in the forest or in the savannah, in remote or urban areas.

Bat capture, Gabon.

••• A virus transmitted to humans by great apes and bats •••

2The animal origin of this disease remained a mystery until IRD researchers and their partners started looking into it. From 1996 to 2005, they found that the virus also decimated great apes in the forests of Gabon and the Congo. These animals were hunted and eaten by local populations. As researchers continued to investigate, they proved that the virus was capable of spreading from primates to humans. Nevertheless, great apes were not the only source of infection, as demonstrated by researchers a few years later when they detected antibodies and fragments of the Ebola virus genome in several fruit bat species, suggesting that these animals were the actual reservoirs of the Ebola virus. A few years later, they realised that certain human epidemics coincided with the migration of fruit bats. As these mammals were also hunted by local populations, they could be responsible for the epidemics: transmission to humans may be due to direct contact with bat blood or through fruit soiled by the saliva of these bats.

Investigating the role of bats responsible for the epidemic, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

3These findings resulted in the setting up of wildlife monitoring networks, as well as clear and concrete prevention instructions to local populations, including in terms of hunting, with a view to reducing the likelihood of outbreaks.

Village affected by an epidemic, Gabon.

“The partnership with IRD has stimulated research on Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Gabon in response to the epidemics which have dramatically and repeatedly affected our country since 1995. Thanks to ongoing collaboration between our two institutes, CIRMF has become a world-class centre of excellence in the field of emerging diseases in Central Africa, which is why it was recently designated as WHO collaborating centre for arboviruses and viral haemorrhagic fever.” 
Professor Jean-Raymond Nzenze, Chair of the Board of the Franceville International Centre for Medical Research, Gabon