Deep in the jungle, hunting for the next Ebola outbreakCameron looks at film footage from the trap where he hopes to catch wild pigs.Nichole Sobecki/For The Washington PostDeep in the jungle, hunting for the next Ebola outbreak - The Washington PostDeep in the jungle, hunting for the next Ebola outbreak - The Washington PostDeep in the jungle, hunting for the next Ebola outbreak - The Washington PostMeat on display in the market in Brazzaville. The market is a source of bush meat, which is one of the ways Ebola travels from animals to humans.Nichole Sobecki/For The Washington PostByKevin Sieff-March 19 at 6:17 PM

NOUABALE-NDOKI NATIONAL PARK, Congo Republic More than 3,000 miles from the fading Ebola crisis in West Africa, a team of U.S.-funded researchers is hunting deep in a remote rain forest for the next outbreak.They arent looking for infected people. Theyre trying to solve one of sciences great mysteries: Where does Ebola hide between human epidemics?The answer appears to lie in places such as this vast tracts of African jungle where gorillas, bats and other animals suspected of spreading the virus share a shrinking ecosystem. If scientists can pinpoint the carriers, and how Ebola is transmitted between them, future epidemics will be easier to anticipate or even prevent.The mission is urgent. Based on the pattern of previous outbreaks, the next one probably isnt far away.The world was shocked by the most recent epidemic, which has killed more than 10,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. But it was hardly the first. Over the past 40 years, Ebola hasexploded sporadicallyin sub-Saharan Africa, wiping out scores of people. It has also quietly decimated wildlife populations. As many as a third of the worlds gorillashave diedof the disease. The animals that spark EbolaVIEW GRAPHICICScientists are more anxious than ever to figure out why the virus has flared in some places but not others. And so, on a recent humid Sunday morning, a 51-year-old wildlife veterinarian from Michigan loaded his gear into a leaky dugout canoe and headed with his team into the Congo River Basin.They swatted away swarms of flies and bees as they paddled to the end of the river and then trekked for miles through the brush. They were seeking one of the animals suspected of harboring Ebola: the red river hog.If the researchers captured one of the wild pigs and it tested positive for Ebola, it would confirm decades of hypotheses and help scientists start to map the disease. It would also be a frightening prospect a sign that the virus was again ready to pounce on a human population.Kenneth Cameron, a compact, energetic man who works for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, had spent much of his life quietly pursuing Ebola through Central Africa. But this time, the wildlife veterinarian was getting calls from big government agencies. The National Institutes of Health had expressed interest in supporting his work if things went well.The West Africa outbreak was a reminder to everyone that its out there and its waiting to emerge again, he said.Origin of the outbreakThere have been 24 recorded outbreaks of Ebola since 1976, when it was first identified. Each began with an interaction between a human and an animal. One was believed to have started with a man hunting and butchering an infected gorilla, another with a family eating the carcass of a chimpanzee. Those events are called spillovers.In West Africa, therecent Ebola outbreakprobably began with a 2-year-old Guinean boy who touched a droplet of bat feces in December 2013.Its only a question of how destructive the next one will be, said Cameron, whose research is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.Ebola remains one of the least understood of the worlds deadly diseases. Scientists suspect that fruit bats are the reservoir host of the virus, meaning they carry and transmit the disease but dont suffer from it themselves. But even that hasnt been proven.Many diseases, such as rabies and influenza, are also transmitted between humans and animals. But in most cases, we know which species are susceptible. Thats not true with Ebola. In October, for example, the city of Dallas spent $27,000 to quarantine the dog of an Ebola-infected nurse. Can dogs transmit the disease? No one knows.Heres what is known. In 2002, in a village called Mbomo, more than 200 miles from where Camerons team was working, people started getting sick. At first, the villagers assumed it was a particularly vicious strain of malaria. But then the ill tested positive for Ebola. Over several weeks, 178 people died.When the epidemiologists traced the disease, they heard the story of hunters who had cooked and eaten the carcass of a gorilla found in the jungle. At the time, dozens of gorillas had died suddenly.Soon everyone understood that it came from the forest, recalled Marco Joel, who was the director of the local Red Cross chapter at the time. The hunters brought it back and infected their families.For years, the worlds gorillas had been dying of Ebola in staggering numbers. By 2007, largely because of Ebola outbreaks, theInternational Union for Conservation of Naturedeemed western lowland gorillas to be critically endangered.You cant separate public health from animal health there. Its all one issue, said Vincent Munster, the head of the virus ecology unit at NIHs Montana-based Rocky Mountain Laboratories.In November 2003, people in Mbomo started getting sickagain. The doctors returned. The Ebola tests came back positive. Dozens more died. But in trying to trace this outbreak, epidemiologists heard a different story. A group of hunters had killed and eaten a wild pig days before falling ill.Was this outbreak connected to the last a pig that had become infected by a gorilla? Or was this a separate transmission chain entirely? No one could tell. No pigs had ever tested positive for Ebola.Hugely important workTwelve years later, under a towering ficus tree in the jungle, Cameron and his team hammered the posts of a metal cage into the ground. They set up a trap door that would be triggered by the weight of the animal, which would be tranquilized and examined for the virus.Cameron watched as the trap door was tested for the first time. The stakes were high. If he couldnt capture a pig, it would make it hard to secure funding for a follow-up study. The door went down with a bang.a marche! Cameron screamed in French with boyish excitement. It works.Since 2005, as part of his Ebola research, Cameron has tested primate carcasses and feces. He has captured bats using large translucent nets. He has darted gorillas with a tranquilizer gun. He has loaded blood samples onto jeeps and boats and planes to be taken to labs and tested for Ebola.There have been successes, such as when his team found Ebola antibodies in the feces of gorillas, a sign that the animals had been exposed to the disease. But largely, the research has been a slow crawl through the dark.Part of the difficulty is finding the animals hes looking for. For every thousand bats his team has captured over the past four years, only one has shown evidence of the virus.Its hugely important work, said Munster, of NIH. The more we know about the virus, the more intervention strategies we can create.By leaping from species to species, Ebola is doing what all pathogens do attempting to survive and reproduce. And though scientists arent sure which species are immune, they have a pretty good idea of how its transmitted between vulnerable animals.Cameron uses the example of a tree he once recorded with a field video camera in the Congo Republic. Pigs, gorillas and chimpanzees were all filmed eating from it, often consuming different pieces of the same fruit.You watch that film and you see just how quickly this thing could spread, Cameron said, wide-eyed.In a place like this countrys north, where bush meat is still consumed as a rare source of protein, the chain would almost inevitably lead to humans. Its a chain that the men on Camerons team know well. They are from local villages, and while they know enough to no longer consume wildlife, they still extol its virtues.Elephant is delicious, said Makoti Marcelin, one of the wildlife trackers. It tastes just like gorilla.But while people in the Congo Republic mostly stopped eating great apes in the wake of the 2002 Ebola outbreak, pigs are still sold in markets around the country.If an infected pig made its way near a town or village, it would almost definitely be eaten. In 2002, the trip between the north and the capital, Brazzaville, took about three days a likely reason the disease never reached the city. Now, a new Chinese-built road has made the journey much faster. Insulating the next outbreak will be much more difficult.The state of preparedness of the country is very low, said Jean-Vivien Mombouli, the director of research at the countrys National Laboratory for Public Health. We would not be able to recognize the disease early enough to limit the outbreak to less than 10 cases.As researchers work on an Ebola vaccine, manyconservationists are pushingfor it to be given to animals, too. That would require a massive effort to tranquilize the animals before vaccinating them or disguise the serum in their food. But it could save thousands of the animals.It could also help prevent another spillover a possibility that was underscored just before Camerons team left for the jungle, when a gorilla attacked a man on a different research team, biting his leg and drawing blood.So much we dont knowThe morning after the trap was set, Camerons team went back to the area.There were pigs here last night, said another veterinarian, Alain Ondzie, pointing to a trail with hoof marks nearby.But the metal cage was empty.Its frustrating, Cameron said. Theres still just so much we dont know.When he returned to his office in the capital, he e-mailed his headquarters in New York that he hadnt yet caught any pigs but was hopeful about the next site visit in a few weeks.A few miles away was one of the citys largest markets, a frenzy of people selling chicken, antelope and other meat, displayed on wooden tables under buzzing clouds of flies.In one area, the tables were full of wild pig, brought from the northern Congo Republic, near Camerons research site. The salesman said he had heard about Ebola about the epidemic 3,000 miles away. But there had been no impact on local peoples taste for wild pig.He looked down at his table.We all know that pigs cant get Ebola, he said confidently.Posted byThavam