MONKEYS KILLED OVER YELLOW FEVER FEARS
Brazilians ‘lynching’ primates, mistakenly thinking they spread sickness
FEARS of spreading yellow fever are behind the illegal killing of scores of monkeys here, complicating efforts to fight the virus. Locals, mistakenly believing that the animals can spread yellow fever to humans, are blamed for the surge in killings.
Just this year, 238 monkeys had been found dead in Rio state, compared with 602 for the whole of last year, said the city sanitation service.
Of those, 69 per cent were mostly being beaten to death and some poisoned. Last year, the proportion found killed by humans was 40 per cent. The rest died of natural causes.
Yellow fever numbers have spiralled in parts of Brazil, causing 25 deaths in Rio state since the start of the year.
The government has launched a vaccination programme, but does not have enough vaccine to give everyone the full, lifetime dose.
The monkeys’ bodies are collected at an autopsy lab at the Rio Veterinary Centre, where coordinator Fabiana Lucena said panicking residents were making a big mistake by killing the animals.
“People should understand that it’s the mosquito transmitting the yellow fever virus.
“The monkey is a victim and if there are no more monkeys in the countryside, then mosquitoes will come to attack people.
“To have a more effective vaccination campaign, we have to identify the zones where monkeys are dying from yellow fever. When people kill them, the virus is harder to trace.”
A dozen small dead monkeys lay on a table at the lab in preparation for examination.
“Here, you see multiple fractures to the jaws, cervical area, as well as skull traumas,” she said, showing a primate’s head.
“At the time of the first human deaths from yellow fever in midJanuary, we’d sometimes get 20 monkeys found dead in a day, with 18 of them showing signs of attack,” Lucena said.