While Bush was on the board of Barrick Gold, one of their mines in Africa was taken by Congolese rebels. A few months after that, the mine became the epicenter of one of the largest Ebola epidemics on record.
Though the story mentioning Barrick has pretty thoroughly been purged from the net, it hangs on at
http://hjem.get2net.dk/kingchaos/Ebola.htmA Washington Post story also had a heartbreaking description of its discovery: "When men working an abandoned gold mine in the town of Durba began vomiting blood and dying by the dozens in late 1998, a doctor named Bonzali Katanga suspected either
Ebola virus or its cousin, Marburg virus. As the government's district health officer, Bonzali did his duty, even though Congolese rebels, rather than any government, controlled his district. For 4 months, Bonzali tried to raise the alarm, in urgent radio reports to his provincial superiors in Kisangani. But in Congo, where only 2 of 11 provincial health inspectors have even a working vehicle, the health system has barely existed since the 1980s. Bonzali's superiors responded only when he died. The investigators who finally arrived found a vial of his blood in a refrigerator. The sample contained the Marburg virus, which Bonzali had contracted treating miners on his own. The Marburg outbreak in Durba has killed 69 of 103 people infected so far."