DEADLY VIRUS HITS UGANDA
The turnoff into the Zika Forest is easy to miss, just a small break in the tree line along the main road between Entebbe Airport and Uganda's capital, Kampala. A worn-out sign announcing its start only comes into view after a journey down a small dirt path.
The turnoff into the Zika Forest is easy to miss, just a small break in the tree line along the main road between Entebbe Airport and Uganda's capital, Kampala. A worn-out sign announcing its start only comes into view after a journey down a small dirt path.
The explosive spread of the Zika virus may have caught the world by surprise, but its namesake, the forest preserve near the edge of Lake Victoria, isn't a place to just stumble on to. The researchers who have been coming here for more than a half-century come with a purpose: to study viruses and the mosquitoes that carry them.
A well-worn sign is the only indication of the start of the Zika forest, Uganda's only preserve devoted entirely to science research.
"Every year we come across new viruses," said Julius Lutwama, lead researcher at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), which owns the forest. "In the last five years or so, almost each year we come across a new virus in this country."
Uganda sits in the middle of seven distinct biogeographic zones. To the east: the savannahs of Kenya and Tanzania. To the west: the Congo basin rainforest. And Lutwama credits that biodiversity for attracting the first scientists here in the 1930s.ZIKA FOREST GROUND ZERO
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