Inside 'world's deadliest cave' that could cause next pandemic: Kitum in Kenya ... trends now
Carved by the tusks of elephants, who visit its caverns to scrape the walls for salt, Kitum cave in Kenya hosts some of the deadliest pathogens known to man.
In 1980, a French engineer from a nearby sugar factory contracted the body-melting Marburg virus from visiting Kitum cave, which resides within the dormant volcano at the heart of Kenya's Mount Elgon National Park. He died quickly at a Nairobi hospital.
'Connective tissue in his face is dissolving, and his face appears to hang from the underlying bone,' a book on the case described the man's rapid decay from the viral hemorrhagic or blood-letting fever, 'as if the face is detaching itself from the skull.'
Seven years later, Kitum cave took another victim, a Danish schoolboy on vacation with his family. The boy died of a related hemorrhagic virus, now called Ravn virus.
Scientists now realize that the cave's valued salty minerals, which have made it a destination not just for elephants, but also western Kenya's buffaloes, antelope, leopards and hyenas, has turned Kitum into an incubator for zoonotic diseases.
Carved ever deeper by the tusks of elephants, who visit to scrape its walls for salt, Kitum cave in Kenya hosts some of the deadliest diseases known to man
In 1980, a French engineer from a nearby sugar factory contracted the body-melting Marburg virus from visiting the cave, which resides within the dormant volcano at the heart of Kenya's Mount Elgon National Park. He died quickly at a Nairobi hospital
When Kitum was first discovered, researchers did not know what to make of the scrapes and scratches along its walls — theorizing that ancient Egyptian workers had excavated the site in search of gold or diamonds.
The realization that the 600-foot deep cave had been continually deepened and widened by elephants, only to become a haven for disease-carrying bats, came later.
The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) launched an expedition into Kitum cave after the 1980s incidents, wearing pressurized, filtered Racal suits, but struggled to identify the species responsible
