TTE 2.01 Gladys Kalema Zikusoka
The first episode of Series Two of The Thought Exchange is a conversation with Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, an extraordinary Ugandan wildlife activist and the vet for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She was the first person to hold that position and was appointed in in 1995 at the age of 25. The focus of Gladys’s work has been with the gorillas of Bwindi Forest National Park. Just one year after being appointed an outbreak of scabies led to the death of an infant gorilla. Gladys’s work on treating the gorillas and on tracking the source of the infection led to a career long interest in zoonotic illnesses, where diseases jump species. Gladys realised that all of the issues surrounding the gorillas were inter-linked and that the involvement of local communities was absolutely key in maintaining the health of both gorillas and humans. After two subsequent outbreaks of scabies amongst the Bwindi gorillas, Gladys co-founded CTPH (Conservation Through Public Health), a ground-breaking and grass-roots organisation. CTPH is a NGO and non-profit which roots its work in local communities, with a triple programme of Wildlife Conservation, Community Public Health and Alternative Livelihoods. With its Gorilla Conservation Coffee, TPH supports communities with economic activity and educates those communities to support the gorillas as a resource in terms of tourism and eco-systems. Gladys has won a number of awards and is National Geographic Explorer, but the thing which stands out for me is the way in which she works from grassroots upwards with practical and workable solutions for saving the mountain gorilla population, which has risen to just over a 1000 from around 650 when Gladys first started work at Bwindi. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is an incredible person with a track-record of incredible success in her field. The conversation took place in October 2020 against the background of Covid-19, which had a huge impact on the Ugandan communities around the gorilla habitats. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.