Since the 1990s Ebola has been devastating the primate populations, with a mortality rate as high as 95% for gorillas and 77% for chimpanzees; almost a third of gorilla and chimpanzee population has been impacted.

Compared to humans, the mortality rate is around 50%.

The outbreaks seem inconsistent and hard to predict, but when a breakout does happen whole colonies can be wiped out if left untreated.

An outbreak in 1995 killed close to 90% of the gorillas in a national park in Gabon. From 2002-2003 another outbreak killed 5,000 gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. With an estimated 100,000 gorillas left in the wild, that's a major blow.

Due to an ever shrinking habitat, infected apes are more likely to come into contacted with non-infected apes exasperating the problem.

It is not all doom and gloom, the virus can be slowed down by vaccinating the animals. A safe and effective vaccine does exist, but long term testing of chimps infected with the live virus has yet to be done.

"Across much of Europe, medical research on great apes is either banned or highly restricted because of their cognitive similarity to humans. The question is whether or not we should make an exception in this case," says Inglis.

Great apes are already under enough pressure from poaching and loss of habitat, and as a consequence both eastern gorillas and western gorillas have been listed as endangered since 2008.

Unfortunately, there is currently no cure for the human Ebola virus.