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Dogs eating corpses of Ebola victims

mac68DC

Active member
"Experts say dogs will not get sick but could transmit to humans by biting"

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...efused-permission-use-land.html#ixzz3BtC2iK29


"Dogs are digging up the corpses of Ebola victims buried in shallow graves in Liberia and eating them in the street, villagers have claimed.
Furious residents of Johnsonville Township, outside capital Monrovia, raised the alarm after packs of wild dogs were spotted digging up corpses from a specially-designated 'Ebola graveyard', dragging them into the open and feeding on their flesh.
It is the latest development in the epidemic, which was today confirmed to have reached Senegal.
The grisly scenes in Liberia came three weeks after government health officials - desperate to stem the country's rising infection rate - hurriedly buried the bodies despite a heated standoff with villagers who refused to give their permission to use the land.
But rather than resolve the dispute, Liberia's Ministry of Health burial team dug the graves at night to avoid further confrontation, making the infected bodies easy targets for scavengers, villagers say"

Aren't the bodies supposed to be cremated? Do they still not have fuel?

Not only very grim, very dangerous but also highly disrespectful and demoralizing.

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"After epidemiologist Eric Leroy saw dogs scavenge the bloody remains of hunting expeditions in the jungles of the African country of Gabon, he wondered if they could contract the deadly Ebola virus. Some 439 blood samples later, Leroy’s fears were confirmed. Dogs—especially rural dogs—carry Ebola antibodies, proof that they were exposed to the virus before developing an apparent immunity. “If the dog can be infected, it can excrete the virus for a few days,” he says. “During this time it can be itself infectious for the human community living near the dogs.”

Ebola Hunters Turn to Dogs
By Anne Casselman|Sunday, July 24, 2005
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/jul/ebola-hunters
 
Re: Dogs EATING corpses of Ebola victims

Re: Dogs EATING corpses of Ebola victims

I wondered if this was actually true. I do think that cremation makes the most sense since we know so little about this organism and its survival. Not to mention, burials seem to be hasty, and will likely get more hasty.

Is if definite that dogs can transmit the disease to humans? If so, wouldn't most carrion eating animals be a risk?
 
Re: Dogs EATING corpses of Ebola victims

Re: Dogs EATING corpses of Ebola victims

I remember reading that while the virus can shed through saliva, the probability of that infecting someone else was very low (human to human at least). Perhaps a bite might be more dangerous since its saliva to blood. I am looking for studies on it.

=======================
"Abstract
During the 2001-2002 outbreak in Gabon, we observed that several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals. To examine whether these animals became infected with Ebola virus, we sampled 439 dogs and screened them by Ebola virus-specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G assay, antigen detection, and viral polymerase chain reaction amplification. Seven (8.9%) of 79 samples from the 2 main towns, 15 (15.2%) of 99 samples from Mekambo, and 40 (25.2%) of 159 samples from villages in the Ebola virus-epidemic area had detectable Ebola virus-IgG, compared to only 2 (2%) of 102 samples from France. Among dogs from villages with both infected animal carcasses and human cases, seroprevalence was 31.8%. A significant positive direct association existed between seroprevalence and the distances to the Ebola virus-epidemic area. This study suggests that dogs can be infected by Ebola virus and that the putative infection is asymptomatic."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15757552
===========================

I didn't find any examples where this transmission (dog to human) had been documented.
 
Re: Dogs eating corpses of Ebola victims

I posted this on another forum in response to someone asking about this topic. Sorry for some reason I can't get full article this time, and I can normally access this journal through my institution.

So basically 2013 article concludes that dogs like pigs can become infected by Ebola. Where as there is some evidence that pigs may be able to aerosol the virus and transmit it directly onto humans, it is not clear if dogs can act as similar vectors. See abstract below.

Dev Biol (Basel). 2013;135:211-8. doi: 10.1159/000178495. Epub 2013 May 14.

Review of Ebola virus infections in domestic animals.

Weingartl HM1, Nfon C, Kobinger G.

Abstract
.
(EBOV; genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae) cause often fatal, hemorrhagic fever in several species of simian primates including human. While fruit bats are considered a natural reservoir, the involvement of other species in the EBOV transmission cycle is unclear, especially fbor domesticated animals. Dogs and pigs are so far the only domestic animals identified as species that can be infected with EBOV. In 2009 Reston-EBOV was the first EBOV reported to infect swine with indicated transmission to humans; and a survey in Gabon found over 30% seroprevalence for EBOV in dogs during the Ebola outbreak in 2001-2002. While infections in dogs appear to be asymptomatic, pigs experimentally infected with EBOV can develop clinical disease, depending on the virus species and possibly the age of the infected animals. In the experimental settings, pigs can transmit Zaire-Ebola virus to naive pigs and macaques; however, their role during Ebola outbreaks in Africa needs to be clarified. Attempts at virus and antibody detection require as a prerequisite validation of viral RNA and antibody detection methods especially for pigs, as well as the development of a sampling strategy. Significant issues about disease development remain to be resolved for EBOV. Evaluation of current human vaccine candidates or development of veterinary vaccines de novo for EBOV might need to be considered, especially if pigs or dogs are implicated in the transmission of an African species of EBOV to humans.
 
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