Liberian lab chimps finally retire

These uninhabited river islands lie south of Liberia's capital, Monrovia, and are home to 65 chimpanzees.

Remnants of a troop of 400 former test subjects, they've weathered decades of invasive medical experiments, backed by the US. They're currently attended to and fed twice daily by Richard Ssuna, a Humane Society International vet, who explains the chimps' traumatic past.

Richard Ssuna: "Some of the chimps you are seeing here were probably in their lifetime - the time of doing the research - could have experienced about 400 biopsies, meaning 400, anaesthetised 400 times."

Financed by the New York Blood Centre (NYBC) in the 1970s, diseases such as hepatitis B were investigated at this centre.

However, the scientific experiments weren't the chimps' only woes. 1989 saw the outbreak of a 14 year civil war in Liberia, triggering widespread food shortage. This forced research staff to self-fund feeding the chimps, which faced starvation.

Richard Ssuna: "Essentially the caregivers, the staff from the biomedical research had to dig deep in their pockets and provide very basic rations, which of course, you know, led to severe suffering."

Ceasing its financial aid in 2015, the NYBC provoked widespread outrage. And during the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, US multinational investment bank, Citigroup intervened, until the Humane Society International and the NYBC joined forces to resume the continuing care for the primates.

Richard Ssuna: "You know, we cannot release them back in the wild because of all the tests that were done on them. They could, you know, have a devastating effect on conservation of other chimps, free-ranging chimps or wild chimps."

Chimpanzees have a lifespan upwards of 60 years and as these chimps pose a threat to their wild relatives, they'll require decades of ongoing support.

View Less