From the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program

Following a request from Dian Fossey to Ruth Morris Keesling shortly before Dian Fossey's death, the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Center was founded in 1986, funded by the Morris Animal Foundation. James Foster, a renowned veterinary, was asked to establish the center in Kinigi at the foot of the volcanoes. Since then, 12 veterinarians have been working for the center.
Together with my colleague Antoine Mudakikwa, I am carrying out the health service of the mountain gorillas living on the Virunga Volcanoes in Rwanda and Congo. When required, we also support our colleagues in Uganda.
The risk of disease has to be considered the greatest threat to the mountain gorillas, who are otherwise well protected. Among other tasks, we have to continuously monitor the state of health of all habituated (research and tourist groups) and unhabituated gorillas (if they are seen) by observation and non-invasive examination methods (faeces, urine). A program of faecal tests is conducted on a regular basis in Rwanda and Congo. In addition, we are also developing new examination methods.
If the gorillas fall seriously ill with diseases transmitted by humans, or if they are injured or suffer from a life-threatening condition, they might be treated under anaesthetics. As each individual is important for the gene pool and living conditions are not natural anymore because of the strong human impact, this is considered justified. In 70% of treatments under anaesthetisia, snares are removed or injuries caused by snares are treated. These injuries can cause the animal's death if the wound gets infected and the infection is followed by septicaemia. Thanks to the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program, it has been possible to save every gorilla observed to be ill since 1990.
In addition, we determine basic physiological parameters with blood, faeces and urine samples from gorillas that are anaesthetised for medical reasons. Moreover, we are conducting non-invasive research of causes, epidemiology, clinical symptoms and pathology of diseases of free-ranging mountain gorillas. Animals found dead in the park are taken to the Veterinary Center for postmortem examination. This enables us to determine the cause of death and to identify changes caused by disease and age. Tissues, hair or body fluids of dead or anaesthetized animals are stored in a biological resource bank founded by the Morris Animal Foundation in 1999 to be used in further research. The sampling itself, the treatment of samples and the data processing are our tasks. The information gained in the process helps us to develop an up-to-date health care program for the mountain gorillas and to monitor its implementation.
Disease transmission from the surrounding human population is considered the greatest threat to the mountain gorillas' health. Therefore we are recording the most important diseases of the people living close to the park in order to introduce a health care program for those members of the park staff and researchers who have the closest contact with the animals. We monitor the compliance with the rules and regulations for visitors, which we helped to make more stringent in February 1999.
We train park staff in Rwanda, Uganda and the Central African Republic on disease transmission paths from humans to primates and the other way around and we explain preventative methods and the meaning of the visitor regulations. Moreover, we instruct them how to write medical reports and to help the veterinarian with emergency treatments with or without anaesthetics. For the future it is planned to train soldiers who enter the park on a regular basis as well.
We ensure the medical care of injured or other wild animals that are taken to the center and we take care of animals in the other protected areas of Rwanda, Nyungwe and Akagera. At the moment, my colleague helps to implement a health program for the western lowland gorillas in the Central African Republic. In the future, we also hope to provide medical care for the eastern lowland gorillas in the Congo, as this was requested by the authorities of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
In addition, I am involved in all other tasks which the management of such a center requires: public relations, accounting, purchase of equipment, co-operation with the local park authorities and other gorilla NGOs as well as participation in their meetings, making contacts and exchanging ideas with nature conservation organizations in Rwanda and abroad, development and realization of research programs, collaboration with our colleagues in Uganda, communication with our research director in the USA, the passing on of information and keeping in contact with the Morris Animal Foundation and Ruth Keesling, our lifetime trustee, laboratory work and maintenance, training and education of staff, etc. In our spare time, we support the local veterinarian in surgery on small animals.
All those montain gorillas who showed symptoms of disease during the last 3 months (July to September 1999) and therefore underwent health controls through the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program have recovered by now or are already in the process of recovering.
A 6-year-old juvenile called Arusha was found dead by park staff next to its night nest. We did a postmortem examination. As a preliminary result, the cause of death has been given as a paralytic ileus. The examinations are not finished yet. In November, a 31-year-old female in Shinda's group died, probably from old age. She had 3 miscarriages in succession, the last one in October. We are still waiting for the histo-pathology results of these cases.

Ute Eilenberger

Dr. Ute Eilenberger worked as a veterinarian and studied guenons and mangabeys as well as eastern lowland gorillas in 1992 and 1993 in Zaire. Then she studied the health status of gorillas and people in Kahuzi-Biega. After various jobs in Germany, she led, with her counterpart Antoine Mudakikwa, the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Center in Rwanda from 1999 to 2001.

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