This isn't the first Ebola outbreak. Ever since the discovery of the virus sometime in the late 1970s, there were already reported cases in Africa, especially in Congo, but they certainly paled in comparison to what happened this year: more than 7,000 had already died, including over a hundred health workers, with no less than 10,000 reported cases. But what caused the outbreak? A new study brings us to a hollowed-out tree and patient zero.
Around October 2014, researchers identified patient zero: a 2-year-old boy named Emile who lived in Meliandou in Guinea. He was believed to have been infected by the virus in early December. After he died on December 6, his grandmother, mother, and sister also succumbed to it a month after.
What they didn't know, however, was how the boy contracted the virus in the first place. A new research that can now be read in EMBO Molecular Medicine points out that the culprit might have been a bat that inhabited a hollowed-out tree in the village.
These bats are Mops condylurus, a type of fruit bat. They are known to move to the southeastern region of Guinea, where the boy's village can be found, every year. They stay in trees, and based on the research, children love to play with them as their mothers proceed to continue the same path that leads to their washing area. It's therefore possible that Emile had interacted with the bat and perhaps got bitten.
This theory may also be correct since the father wasn't a hunter, eliminating the possibility that the boy might have been infected by a different kind of meat. It's also unlikely for someone to contract the virus from larger mammals. Incidentally, this same type of bat is linked to Marburg virus, which shares similarities with Ebola.
The tree burned on March 2014, and many bats flee but were soon caught for food by the villagers.
