Down winding paths through dense jungles, Gerald Mukisa kicks up the dry leaves noisily with his feet to provide warning sounds, saying that the late afternoon heat is “snake time.”
The forest is calm. Only the sounds of insects, birdsong and the rustle of monkeys in the jungle canopy above disturb the air.
It was here in the thick woodland of Zika Forest, about 25km from Kampala, that the mosquito-borne Zika virus was first discovered in 1947.
Photo: AP
The virus, linked to a surge in birth defects, is “spreading explosively,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) said last week.
The WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on the outbreak is due to meet today.
Mukisa, who has worked to guard the forest for the past seven years, only found out about the virus that takes its name two weeks ago.
“A few people who live nearby the forest and have heard about it are getting worried,” he said. “Many others don’t know about it.”
Days ago, Zika Forest was a little-known reserve visited only by bird watchers and scientists.
“Students come every week, coming from all over the world. There are so many types of trees, and all sorts of birds,” Mukisa said.
Most local cases of the virus were mild, resulting in a rash, fever and red eyes in a small fraction of cases. Global health authorities barely took notice until a 2007 outbreak of the virus in the Yap group of islands in Micoronesia.
An outbreak that last year began in Brazil has been blamed for a surge in birth defects with thousands of babies born with small heads, an incurable and sometimes fatal condition known as microcephaly.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health is keen to point out it has no known cases of the virus, and that the current Americas’ outbreak did not originate in East Africa.
“We have not recorded a case in Uganda in several years and we don’t have such an outbreak,” the ministry said in a statement. “As a country, our disease and epidemic response systems are strong as evidenced in the way we have handled past viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks.”
Uganda has suffered outbreaks of Ebola, as well as an illness known as “nodding disease.”
The forest remains a research site for the Uganda Virus Research Institute, an environmental health and protection agency founded in 1936.
“Warning! Uganda Virus Research Institute Land. Don’t Trespass,” reads one metal sign amid the thick vegetation, the red paint peeling in the sun.
Local resident Ruth Mirembe, 24, said she learned about the virus on Facebook.
“I’m not worried,” she said.
Zika means “overgrown” in the local language, Luganda.
The institute said the “most prominent visitor” to Zika was former US president Jimmy Carter “who came on a bird watching tour.”
The details of the virus’ discovery — described in a 1952 study by Britain’s Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene — described the “forested area called Zika,” where scientists were researching yellow fever among small rhesus macaque monkeys.
“This area of forest consists of a narrow, dense belt of high but broken canopy growth with clumps of large trees,” the 1952 paper read. “It lies along the edge of a long arm of Lake Victoria from which it is separated by a papyrus swamp.”
Institute scientist Julius Lutwama, 56, said the study saw caged monkeys placed at different heights, with a 36m steel tower allowing researchers to carry out studies in the canopy of the thick trees.
“Blood samples would be taken from these monkeys to try to diagnose yellow fever, but actually that is how this disease was found,” he said.
There is no vaccine against Zika, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday described as a “brand new” virus that in recent years has expanded swiftly and been linked to brain damage in babies.
“What has happened in South America is that it has changed a little bit... and through these changes it has become more aggressive toward humans,” Lutwama said.
However, Lutwama said he is not concerned and it poses little threat to Uganda, where people have always lived with it.
“Zika virus has always been a mild infection. Out of say five or 10 people who are infected, only one or two may actually show some fever that is noticeable,” Lutwama said. “Probably the other thing for us is that we have so many other viruses in the same group, so they confer some kind of immunity toward each other.”
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