Ebola challenges hit Congo meat trade
Traders fear loss of income as wild animal meat may be linked to outbreak
FOR 25 years, Patrick Matondo has earned a living buying and selling monkeys, bats and other animals popularly known as bush meat along the Congo River.
Standing on the riverbank in Mbandaka, a city affected by the deadly new outbreak of Ebola virus, the father of five said that for the first time he was worried he would not be able to support his family.
“Since Ebola was declared, business has decreased by almost half. It’s really, really bad,” the 47-year-old said, hanging his head.
Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak,declared in May, has 38 confirmed cases including 14 deaths. The discovery of a handful of Ebola cases among Mbandaka’s more than
1 million residents has also hurt the economy, especially among traders of meat from wild animals.
The virus, which spreads through bodily fluids of those infected, has been known to jump from animals such as monkeys and bats to humans.
In the West Africa outbreak four years ago that killed more than 11000 people, it was widely suspected that the epidemic began when a 2-year-old boy in Guinea was infected by a bat.
Usually the wild animals are highly sought-after as popular sources of protein along with beef and pork, and cargo ships carrying the smoked meat arrive daily in the city, the trade hub for Congo’s northwestern Equateur province.
Meanwhile, bush meat markets still see locals bartering for the animals, both dead and alive.
Prospective buyers pause at tables piled with monkey meat, picking up blackened chunks one by one for a closer look.
“Meat is very important for people here. It’s one of the biggest industries in Mbandaka,” said Matondo, a leader in the city’s bush meat association.
Dr Pierre Rollin, an Ebola expert with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said if the meat was cooked, smoked or dried it killed the virus. The people at greatest risk were hunters and butchers who processed the meat, he said.
The World Health Organisation has advised against trade and travel restrictions because of the current outbreak, which is mostly in remote areas.
Boats with bush meat continue to depart for the capital, Kinshasa, 600km downstream, for villages tucked deep in the rainforest up and down the river.
Disease experts warned, however, that precautions were still necessary as monkeys and bats are sold live throughout the region. Traders said demand had dwindled because of Ebola, with sales for many dropping from about 100 animals a day to about 20.
“Kinshasa and Brazzaville told us to stop sending monkeys and bats,” said another trader in Mbandaka, Willy Taban, who said his business has been cut in half in recent weeks. He was referring to buyers in the capital of the nearby Republic of Congo, which is across the river from Kinshasa.
Congo’s health minister Dr Oly Ilunga Kalenga said there were no plans to ban sales of bush meat in the province since bush meat was not the primary way the Ebola virus spread. Instead, the government was focusing on good hygiene practices such as hand-washing, he said.
Health officials are also tracking down anyone who had close contact with anyone infected by the virus, offering an experimental vaccine and promoting safe burials and other practices. Such health efforts can be challenging in communities where many people consider Ebola to be witchcraft. Others are sceptical that the disease exists, even though this is the Central African country’s ninth outbreak.
One Mbandaka trader, Gamo Louambo, said he was still shipping 100 wild animals to Kinshasa daily and would not stop eating them as they were his main source of food. “I don’t see Ebola. It isn’t here,” he said. In West Africa, where there had never been an outbreak before 2014, getting people to accept that Ebola was a real disease was key, said the WHO’s Jonathan Polonsky.
For those in Kinshasa, “Ebola is very far away,” said Defede Mbale, immigration chief at the capital’s port of Maluku.
Pointing to a poster of safe Ebola practices on his desk, he said the government had provided extra resources to patrol the river and take people’s temperatures as they arrived by boats, checking for fevers.
He did not doubt the deadly virus existed, but said there was only so much that he was willing to change.
“We have our customs and they won’t change because of Ebola,” he said. “We’ll eat all foods.” – AP