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Observing the chimps was an exceptional experience, and unlike anything you could get anywhere else in the world, as the observation is surely too close to be safe – the boat pulls right up to the shore, and the chimps come running to collect their food. The chimps have to be fed regularly because there is simply not enough food on the islands to support them (in the wild, chimps move from place to place in search of food, sleeping in a different locations each night). The food is paid for by the New York Blood Center, the same organization that established the laboratory in 1974, which was later forced to shut down due to the civil war. And for drinks, some barrels of water and a jug of milk! The journey starts at a dock at the end of a dirt road, where the men load a large quantity of food from the back of a truck into the boat – mostly fruit (papayas, pineapples, mangoes, bananas, and oranges), but also coconuts, sugar cane, and cornbread (which is apparently baked just for the chimps). They rotate between three islands on one day and three on the next, so all the chimps are fed every other day. We visited three of the islands via motor boat, hitching a ride with the men whose job it is to feed the chimps every day. They are not wild chimps, but chimps that were previously used for hepatitis studies and vaccine tests, and then released into the “wild” as their “retirement.” People call it “Monkey Island,” but actually there are six islands, and they don’t have monkeys on them, but rather chimpanzees. Along the dirt road, you pass the Liberian Institute of Biomedical Research (yes, such a thing exists, and yes it does look like a great setting for a horror film!). New York Blood Centre donated $6 million to them in 2017, a fraction of the $17 million needed annually.On Sunday, we made an amazing visit to a place called “Monkey Island.” It is about a 1.5 hour drive outside of Monrovia, past the Roberts International Airport, and then down a dirt road to the waterfront. Nonprofit, Humane Society International in Washington, has since picked up the tab to bankrolled the care of the Chimps, spending about $500,000 (£380,000) annually on Monkey Island and the chimps are now fed twice daily.
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When civil war broke out in the country in 1999 the only option was to permanently house them on the island, because putting them in forests could lead to the spread of the viruses they had been infected with. Thomas, meanwhile, has always been their caretaker. The NYBC stopped funding their care entirely after the elbow outbreak of 2015. Researchers from the New York Blood Centre (NYBC) Vilab, once injected Mabel with viruses such as Hep B and river blindness, but fled the country during the Ebola outbreak. “I’ll be doing this,” says Thomas, “until they die or I do.” Unlike the scientists who brought them there, Thomas says he will never abandon the chimps. Other chimps go by the monikers Stuart, Juno, Allyse and Annie.