bob-swanepoel-interview digital science Virgin Media
The ebola virus
You've spent years searching for the source of the Marburg virus. Why?
It's important to find out where these viruses live so we can get people to avoid them. We and colleagues tested thousands of ground-dwelling animals, insects and birds, and didn't find it, but the evidence suggested it had to be in bats. We netted bats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Gabon and scoured the forest canopy in Ivory Coast, but it's hard to find the few bats that are infected. We eventually found evidence in bats in a mine in the DRC where there was a long history of miners suffering a Marburg-like disease.
How did you end up working with some of the world's scariest viruses?
In 1975 I was running the Veterinary Research Laboratory in what is now Harare in Zimbabwe. Marburg virus had recently been discovered in lab monkeys in Marburg, Germany, and in Yugoslavia, but never anywhere else. A couple of young Australians were hitch-hiking in Zimbabwe and South Africa and stopped at a little place called Marburg, by a weird coincidence. The guy got sick and was taken back to Johannesburg, where he died. Then his girlfriend got sick, then a nurse. It turned out to be Marburg virus. Then the next year in Zaire (now the DRC) they discovered Ebola virus. South Africa decided to build a high-security lab so we could handle these infections safely. When it opened in 1980 I went to run it.
Like many virus experts, you qualified as a vet.
I always knew I wanted to be a scientist. I just had this vision of white coats and labs. At first I didn't have the money to go to medical school, so I worked as a miner. One day my hard hat got stuck. I realised this wasn't the place to be, living 1800 metres above sea level and working 600 metres under it. Later I applied to medical and veterinary college at the same time, and I got the vet reply first.
You've worked at many haemorrhagic fever outbreaks. Isn't it dangerous?
The viruses aren't the only problem. These are places with very limited resources, and there are doctors, nurses, admin people, epidemiologists, and only so many vehicles, security guards, satellite phones and so on to go around. Then we start running around the jungle, catching strange animals and donning weird outfits to perform weird dissecting rituals, and the local people become convinced that we are perpetuating the outbreak. Sometimes the other international staff don't even want to share accommodation with us. Studies are put on the back burner until the situation stabilises, and by then it can be too late to find the original source of the virus.
