Khan: If there's a mystery disease out there
anywhere in the world,
people generally send those samples
to the Special Pathogens Branch
to help them figure out what it is.
Narrator: The fear of Ebola is spreading in Uganda.
We have 101 cases.
Out of this, 22 have died.
Narrator: The virus is transmitted
through bodily fluids.
It has so far been found mostly
in western Uganda's Bundibugyo District.
Well, when CDC responds to an outbreak, typically,
we'll meet with the Ministry of Health
and with other nongovernmental organizations
to figure out where we fit into the puzzle,
and we really take our lead from the Ministries of Health.
Sealy: In an outbreak situation,
you kind of have to quickly pack up.
You have to really know what you're going to need,
and that's why we kind of have established, okay,
how much are we going to need to run 500 samples, say.
Ksiazek: We're involved in setting up
laboratory diagnostics on-site, or at least
in the near proximity to the outbreak itself.
And so on a day-to-day basis, we would get specimens,
take them in to a makeshift hot lab.
Reed: Being the laboratorian,
you're the first person to actually see the results
and you know firsthand if it's positive or not.
Farnon: To characterize an outbreak,
we typically want to know
the total number of confirmed cases,
and that involves, really, going
to do community surveillance, if it's a wide area,
to have town meetings and tell people what Ebola looks like
so that they can report any suspected cases
to the village health worker.
Ksiazek: Controlling these outbreaks is really a matter
of identifying active cases,
segregating them in health care facilities where
the individuals taking care of them
are protected from being infected themselves.
Now, unfortunately,
in most of the places where these outbreaks occur,
health care workers don't have gloves, don't have gowns,
so they're getting infected, and the first response
during an outbreak is to train, to provide the equipment
and to train the people how to use it properly.
Farnon: One of the most important places
where people can be infected by patients,
other than the hospital, is through burials,
so when people are buried
in a lot of countries in Africa,
there's a ritual sort of cleansing of the body
in preparation for the funeral,
and that can really transmit disease to a lot of people.
Amman: If you have an outbreak situation,
obviously, it's very important to make sure
the human aspect of it is taken care of.
You want to stop --
you want to stop the spread of the disease
in the human population,
and that's what we're here to do.
If you left it right there,
that really doesn't solve the problem.
You don't know what happened
to start that outbreak initially, what kind of behavior
that the human was doing that made him sick to begin with.
75% to 85% of emerging infections
are zoonotic or vectorborne in nature,
which means "transmitted from animals to people";
or "vectorborne,"
transmitted from things like mosquitos or ticks.
The Special Pathogens Branch is responsible for all aspects
of responding to these high-hazard viruses.
I'm in charge of a small ecology unit within the Branch,
and the purpose of that unit is to investigate the circumstances
surrounding the spillover of zoonotic disease pathogens
into human populations.
Towner: Finding the natural reservoir host
for Ebola/Marburg viruses,
I mean, ever since they came onto the scene
in the late '60s and the mid-'70s, I mean,
the question's been out there --
where do these viruses circulate in nature?
Amman: So we start doing sampling
of the immediate environment
and, if we don't have any idea, not, you know,
a particular animal to focus on, we'll kind of do
a broad sampling scheme.
We'll set rodent traps, we'll set insect traps,
we'll do -- try to net bats --
anything we can get our hands on.
We had good data from previous ecological investigations
that this species of bat,
is likely, you know, a reservoir host.
Sealy: We're getting closer to this,
this huge discovery on the reservoir host, but yet,
there's still so much more work to be done.
It's kind of a never-ending process,
and that's one thing I love about science,
is that you're constantly learning something new.
Khan: We cannot just look
at what's going on with people.
We need to look at people, animals, and the environment,
and look at where those intersect,
and this is where we need to work
to protect the population.