Urgent Action to curb COVID to people and gorillas

This report is an update on Conservation Through Public Health’s (CTPH) project (#52950) on GlobalGiving called “Urgent Action to Curb COVID to People and Gorillas”. The previous report was provided in November 2023. At that time, the project had received $28,519.94 out of the $35,000 funding goalTo date, the project is almost achieving its $35000 funding goal, with $30,073.53 raised so far.

As a recap of the main objectives of this project, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we trained Village Health and Conservation Teams members (VHCTs) to become Village COVID-19 Taskforce members (VCTFs) to manage the pandemic in their respective villages bordering Bwindi Impenetrable National Park through Home Based Care, support and surveillance.

With the continued reduction in the number of COVID-19 cases, our focus has now been put on emerging and re-emerging diseases amongst people, livestock the endangered mountain gorillas, and other wildlife around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP).

We continued our routine gorilla health monitoring program by collecting gorilla fecal samples from all 26 habituated gorilla families. This quarter, our team managed to collect and preserve a total of 618 gorilla fecal samples, which are being analyzed at the Gorilla Health and Community Conservation Center to check for any diseases gorillas could have contracted from neighboring humans and livestock.

We also collected fecal samples from humans and livestock around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), home to half of the world’s remaining endangered mountain gorillas. The purpose of this activity was to help us identify the different pathogens that could be cross-transmitted between people, gorillas, and livestock, with a particular focus on helminths, protozoa, bacteria, and respiratory and intestinal viruses. We targeted community livestock that graze along the boundaries of BINP and directly interact with 3 gorilla families that come out of the park in the Northern sector of Bwindi: Mubare, Habinyanja, and Rushegura. We also targeted households that live at the park edge in the northern sector of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

Analysis of these samples is still ongoing. We will let you know in the next report the results that will come out of the analysis and what interventions we will have undertaken in case we find any disease or pathogen of concern.

By generating scientific data on the extent and nature of zoonotic disease transmission around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, CTPH is playing a critical role in safeguarding the health of people and animals at the human-livestock-wildlife interface.

Thank you very much for your continued support.

Best Wishes

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