TIME EUROPE
October 30, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 18
A Trip Inside an African Hot Zone
What happens to a small town and its people when the Ebola virus erupts?
By SIMON ROBINSON Gulu
One of the first to die was Esther Owete. Sometime in early September, the 36-year-old from Kabedo-Opong, in northern Uganda, began complaining of "a coldness in her body," remembers her brother Richard Oyet, standing outside her mud-and-thatch hut. "Then she said she had pains in the muscles in her legs." Owete's chest began hurting. She became feverish and vomited blood. "We thought it was malaria," says a neighbor, Justin Okot. At a clinic in the nearby town of Gulu, Owete was injected with the antimalarial chloroquine and sent home. "She didn't even last 24 hours," says Okot. "We didn't understand that someone could die that quickly. We began calling this thing gemo, which in [the local language] Luo is a type of ghost or evil spirit. No one knows about it, but it comes and takes you in the night."
Ugandan health officials suspected, and tests in South Africa two weeks ago confirmed, that this ghost was real and goes by the name Ebola. A lethal virus first identified in northern Congo in 1976, Ebola attacks almost everything in the body except bone, destroying the immune system in fast-forward and causing organs to melt down, hemorrhage and then bleed out through the body's orifices. The period between infection and the onset of sickness is three to 14 days. Death follows within a fortnight. Ebola-Zaïre, the first strain identified, kills 90% of those infected. The strain that hit Uganda is called Ebola-Sudan; it struck twice in Sudan in the late 1970s and disappeared until this latest outbreak. It kills roughly 50% of those infected. Ebola seems to jump species, can mutate, and occurs regularly every few years in areas where civilization butts up against nature. "Why here? Why now? Nobody knows," says Dr. Guénaël Rodier, director of communicable disease surveillance and response at the World Health Organization and a veteran of five previous outbreaks. There is no known cure.
Experts say they cannot pinpoint the first infection in this outbreak until the virus is contained. But if Esther Owete was the first case, then ground zero is her mud hut, now boarded up. There, minutes after her death, according to neighbors, Owete's distraught mother cried out for her grandson, Owete's one-year-old son Sam, to "suck your mother's last milk so you too can die. There is no one here to look after you now." He survived just four days. The Ebola was really moving by then, rushing through the family as members cared for their dying relatives. Owete's mother died Oct. 1, and three sisters and a nephew soon followed. Seven people in just over three weeks. "One died in that hut, my mother in there, one over there, the kid in there," says brother Richard, 35, making his way around the tiny village. "There is nothing left, no one to look after me. The pain is too difficult to tell."
Local officials first realized they had a problem on Oct. 10, when a health worker rushed back from a visit to his local village to report that people were dying of a disease that seemed to melt the body. A doctor from St. Mary's Hospital in Lacor, just outside Gulu, had noticed the same thing. The Health Ministry immediately set up a task force to identify the killer and stop it. But training and traditions made that job difficult. The first cases admitted to Gulu's two hospitals were put into general wards and treated by doctors and nurses with no proper protection. At least three hospital workers were infected. In part that was because they had no idea what they were dealing with, and in part "because we are used to treating hiv patients without gloves," says Josephine Abur, a nurse at Gulu Referral Hospital. "It isn't nice to touch them with gloves. It hurts their feelings, and people know you can't get aids just from touching. But this one — we didn't know."
Once Ebola was identified, Ugandan officials began a campaign to "sensitize" locals about how to avoid infection. They closed schools and isolated patients as best they could. who officials and medical supplies began arriving from Europe last week. Because it kills so quickly, leaving victims little time to infect others, Ebola usually burns itself out. So far, 47 people have died in the Ugandan outbreak; an additional 75 are known to have the virus.
Scientists are beginning to understand how Ebola affects the body, and could one day develop a vaccine for it. But no one is any closer to explaining where it comes from and why it suddenly attacks. "What we don't understand is how it lives in nature," says who's outbreak coordinator, Mike Ryan. All we know is that the virus is out there, ready to attack another day.
This edition's table of contents
TIME Europe home
More stories from TIME Europe and related links
E-mail us at mail@timeatlantic.com
|
|
|
|
Photo Essay
The return of the Ebola virus
October 30, 2000
EUROPE
Kosovo after Slobo
It is neither a country nor a province, but the Albanian part of the former Yugoslavia yearns for an identity that the West is reluctant to supply
A Man of Chops and Changes
Oliver Ivanovic, the next big Serb
Hopes and Hesitations
Bernard Kouchner, the U.N.'s man in Kosovo
Defender of the Faith
Bologna's controversial Cardinal Biffi says Italy should favor Catholic over Muslim immigrants
E-Europe: Invasion of the Ice Men
Iceland can't survive on fish alone, so young people are looking to make a splash in the new economy
Fast Forward: Denmark's Hippies Hit Their Golden Years
The residents of Christiania, where the 1970s never died, face a very modern problem: an aging population
AFRICA
A Trip Inside an African Hot Zone
What happens to a small town and its people when the Ebola virus erupts?
A Whiff of Revolt on Spice Islands
Thirty-six years after its union with Tanzania, Zanzibar considers divorce
TRAVEL 2000
Destination: Outer Space
As tourism booms, travelers are lining up for a chance to sample the last frontier
The New New Thing
Quirky and futuristic buildings are the latest must-see stops on the tourist trail. But can other cities repeat the magic of Bilbao?
Log On, Take Off
The Internet is revolutionizing the travel industry but online profits remain elusive
Leisure in the Fast Lane
Less time off is leading to shorter, more frequent holidays
A Sea of Possibilities
As an armada of new ships sets sail, Europeans are taking advantage of great bargains afloat
The Going Gets Tougher
Sometimes travel is an endurance test. And for the adventure seeker, that's precisely the point
BUSINESS
The Virtual Grocer
Supermarkets are pushing products on the Internet so customers need not push trolleys
The TiE That Binds
Successful Indian entrepreneurs have united to interact with and inspire the next generation
THE ARTS
The Art of a Wine-Dark Sea
A lavish exhibition celebrates paintings inspired by the enchanting shores of the Mediterranean Sea
He's Back, and He's Not Alone
Macaulay Culkin comes out of "retirement" in a tender but flawed take on the art of seduction
DEPARTMENTS
On Your Own Time
Lisbon
To Our Readers
World Watch
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
E-mail us at mail@timeatlantic.com
|
|
