Ebola Virus in Zaire
Beginning with the January 1995 outbreak of Ebola virus in Kikwit, Zaire,
the CHAART staff have been working with investigators from the Special
Pathogens Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) in Atlanta to
generate images of the area where the first
Ebola
cases were found. The investigation in Kikwit was initially hampered to
a great extent by the lack of accurate and up-to-date maps. The CDC team
expressed a need to (1) accurately identify the location of exposure and
residence of human patients, (2) geographically reference the collection
of vertebrate and invertebrate materials from the ecological
investigation, and (3) correlate these collections with underlying
landscape and faunal characteristics. The long-term goals of the
collaboration are to use remotely sensed environmental information to
supplement observations of the basic ecology of the field sites,
and to utilize a geographic information system to relate these data
with other epidemiological information to investigate the temporal
and spatial elements of the outbreak. As part of this collaboration,
CHAART scientists have provided the CDC team with several image products,
generated from archived SPOT multispectral data and current
Landsat Thematic Mapper data.
Vegetation indices, as well as
landcover classifications,
have been created from these spectral datasets, making it possible for
the CDC team to georeference field data and estimate vegetation changes
in the area since 1985.
CDC's
Ebola virus page.
Back to the
CHAART projects
page.
Last updated: Apr 2000