Governments in West Africa have laws requiring environmental impact studies before approving large development projects. But no one requires developers and local officials to consider the risk of spillover, let alone change their plans considering the potential for deadly outbreaks.
A growing number of advisors are urging governments to take outbreak risk into account. The push comes as the mining giant is putting more projects — and more risk — in the pipeline.
The land covered by mining permit applications in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Ghana would more than double the area authorized for exploration and extraction at around 400,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Germany. About one-third of that expansion will take place in existing jump zones, where spillover risk is already high, Reuters found.
Liberia’s finance minister, Samuel Tweh, is concerned about growing calls to focus more on spillover potential. “These are the things that scare investors away from the country,” he told Reuters in an interview in the capital, Monrovia.
But Tweh’s counterpart in the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Gesler Murray, said the risk of disease must be weighed alongside a comprehensive environmental assessment.
“We have to — very, very strongly — rethink our standard mining practices to include disease risk assessment,” he said in a telephone interview. “There is a growing need.”
The assessments are especially important in light of emerging research indicating that habitat destruction may be rapidly reversing. In a peer-reviewed study of nine Ebola outbreaks between 2006 and 2014, researchers determined that seven occurred within two years of nearby forest damage. Around Meliandau, where Emil fell ill, the time frame was exactly the same: with an increase in tree loss within the last two years.
Throughout West Africa, such rapid growth has pushed humans deeper into the habitat of bats such as the Egyptian rousset, which are known to transmit Marburg virus. Nearly a quarter of trees fell in the area covered by Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Ghana in the first two decades of this century, according to satellite data analyzed by Reuters. It covers a total of 88,000 km², which is twice the size of Switzerland.
Along with the destruction, there has been an increase in zoonotic outbreaks.
According to a recent report by the World Health Organization, or WHO, Africa saw 338 zoonotic outbreaks in the past 10 years, a 63 percent increase from the previous decade. About 70 percent of those outbreaks over a 20-year period were viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Marburg and Ebola. Viruses carried by rodents, insects and ticks also affected more frequently. The WHO cited the continent’s rapidly growing population, urbanization and encroachment on wildlife habitats as factors.
“I couldn’t recognize him”
Mahama Phate, a Ghanaian farmer, was among thousands of people in West Africa who have moved to mining areas in search of prosperity. He had big plans for 2022.
In January, Phate and his young family moved to a village in the country’s southern region of Ashanti, according to his cousin, a close friend and their village chief. He began growing cocoa there, hoping to eventually leave the odd jobs behind. Many of those jobs involved mining, the three said.
A native of northern Ghana, Phate moved south and spent several years bouncing around settlements including Bogoso, a mining town, and Kusa, a village three hours away, where he bought land to pursue his dream in agriculture. Rented.
There was a profound change in Fate’s environment.
A quarter of the forest along the routes traveled by them was cleared by farmers and miners in response to the worldwide demand for cocoa and gold. Satellite images show traces of yellow earth – a clear sign of “galamsey”, a local term for illegal gold mining – pockmarking the surrounding rainforest. Between 2002 and 2020, about 40 percent of forests within 10 km of Bogoso disappeared, according to data analyzed by Reuters.
Near Kusa, where Fatay cultivates cocoa, the line between farm land and wild habitat is blurring, with patches of trees being rapidly felled for development. Farmers there told Reuters that swarms of bats attack plantations at night, leaving guano, half-eaten fruit and partially-chewed pulp on the ground every morning.
Ghanaian health officials have not determined how Fatay contracted Marburg. But the chance of spillage around it was as high as anywhere else on Earth, a Reuters analysis found. Ghana’s government declined to comment on that finding.
On the afternoon of Friday, June 24, Fate told friends in Kusa that he felt ill. On Saturday, Phate’s fever flared up, said his cousin, Frederick Ankpior. A friend bought him the medicine at a local pharmacy. On Sunday, the friend took Fatay to St. Benito Meni Hospital, where doctors suspected some form of hemorrhagic fever. They took blood samples for laboratory analysis and admitted her to the ward for treatment.
According to hospital records, Fateh had died by 11 am on Monday.
Laboratory results, delivered days later, confirmed the pathogen: Marburg.
Marburg has many similarities to Ebola, and the mortality rate is up to 90 percent. Since its discovery in 1967, the virus has been transmitted mostly from Roussets in Egypt to mine workers in Central Africa. After an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998, scientists found bats living in a wildcat gold mine where there were more than 100 victims of the outbreak. Work done. Most miners are engaged in tunneling underground, by hand, without any protective equipment.