Human Public Health

Mountain gorilla ecotourism is currently providing over 50 percent of tourism revenue for Uganda and more importantly, transforming the surrounding villages into flourishing trading centers.

Some of the tourism revenue is spent building schools, clinics and roads. However, poor health of people is compromising this important source of income for the local communities and undermining national efforts to alleviate poverty.

One example is mountain gorilla scabies disease outbreaks that occurred in 1996 and 2000 causing death of an infant and clinical signs in the rest of the group. These outbreaks are suspected to have had a human source of origin, when gorillas interacted with the local community either during tourist and research visits or when crop raiding in people’s gardens.

PUBLIC HEALTH FACT SHEET

• 18 community sensitization drama workshops held with over 5000 community members
• Erection of key health message signposts
• Over 1000 community sensitization materials and brochures on TB, CBDOTS and links to gorilla health and sustainable livelihoods distributed

TUBERCULOSIS

Another potential threat to people and animals is Tuberculosis (TB). According to recent field research by Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka in 2001 and 2002, over 50 percent of chronic coughers in the local community had previously been diagnosed with TB. During the research, new cases were picked up through direct sputum smear examination, four of whom were people who have visited the gorillas regularly at a distance of five meters. The research also found that buffalo in the interior of Queen Elizabeth National Park have a greater incidence of TB than buffalo at the boundaries of the park that mix with cattle. This indicates that buffalo may spread TB to cattle. Almost 50 percent of these people do not boil their milk. Further, people who drink milk from these cattle are at risk of getting bovine tuberculosis.