Scientists now think that they have identified how a young child from Guinea became Patient Zero. They believe that the first patient to become infected with Ebola may have gotten it from playing in a hollowed-out tree with infected bats. Read more on the story and check out the video after the jump!
The first person to become sick with Ebola may have gotten it from playing in a hollowed-out tree that was infected with bats. Emile Ouamouno, a two-year-old from Guinea, was sick a year ago and sadly died. Scientists now think that he is the first patient to become infected with the Ebola virus. The tree that Officials believe the young boy was playing on is in Meliandou, Guinea, which housed infected bats. A study released by EMBO Molecular Medicine scientists, said that the 169 bats that they tested did not carry Ebola. Because of this, they could not prove that the bats caused the Ebola outbreak but it is “a possible scenario,” according to a study by co-author Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.
Leendertz said that he and his colleagues believe that there were no signs of Ebola-infected larger animals, which was also thought to be one of the causes of the outbreak. The larger animals are also near Meliandou, which is the village where Ouamouno lived. The scientists did see that a small group of bats with long tails lived in a tree near by where Ouamouno lived. The tree caught on fire in March and caused a lot of bats to escape before the researchers arrived in April. Currently in Liberia, the Ebola curfew, which started in September, was lifted temporarily for New Year’s Eve worship. Families were able to bury Ebola victims in a special 25-acre plot instead of being required to cremate them in order to not spread the Ebola disease. This year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now hiring a new chief of lab safety after numerous mistakes with anthrax, Ebola, and bird flu samples.
Check out the video below!
