Do gorillas need the Ebola vaccine too? Virus has wiped out a THIRD of chimps and gorillas since the 1990s

Wednesday, January 21, 2015
By Paul Martin

Virus is deadly for great apes, with mortality rates approximately 95 per cent for gorillas and 77 per cent for chimpanzees
Current estimates suggest a third of the world’s gorillas and chimpanzees have died from Ebola since the 1990s
There are up to 100,000 left in the wild – so a single Ebola outbreak wipes out a considerable chunk of the world’s gorilla population

By MEERA INGLIS
DailyMailUK
21 January 2015

There is a side to the Ebola crisis that, perhaps understandably, has received little media attention: the threat it poses to our nearest cousins, the great apes of Africa.

At this moment in time Ebola is the single greatest threat to the survival of gorillas and chimpanzees.

The virus is as deadly for great apes as it is for humans – with mortality rates at approximately 95 per cent for gorillas and 77 per cent for chimpanzees.

Current estimates suggest a third of the world’s gorillas and chimpanzees have died from Ebola since the 1990s.

As with humans, these deaths tend to come in epidemics.

In 1995, an outbreak is reported to have killed more than 90 per cent of the gorillas in Minkébé Park in northern Gabon.

In 2002-2003, a single outbreak of ZEBOV – the Zaire strain of Ebola – in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killed an estimated 5,000 Western gorillas.

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