14 DAY TRIAL // According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, a 2-year-old boy who passed away late last year is behind the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
The child, who used to live in a town in Guinea's Guéckédou region, is said to have contracted the virus sometime towards the end of last year. He soon enough developed the disease and passed away on December 6.
The first few cases
It is understood that, during the time that the 2-year-old boy was displaying Ebola symptoms and was, therefore, contagious, he came into contact not just with members of his family, but also with a traditional healer.
His mother, his 3-year-old sister, and his grandmother all became infected and died shortly after, but not before sickening other members of the community. The same thing happened to the healer who had direct contact with the child.
Prior to his passing, the healer visited a doctor and passed the deadly virus on to him. In turn, the doctor infected his relatives and most likely other people as well, Live Science informs.
Moving to other countries
The virus reached Sierra Leone via a traditional healer who fell sick while treating Ebola patients in Guinea but who was buried in this country. During the funeral, several folks were infected.
As far as Nigeria is concerned, specialists say that the virus entered this country via a man who got infected in Liberia but who insisted on leaving the region where he contracted the virus.
While on route from Liberia to Nigeria, this man is believed to have exposed about 72 people to the Ebola virus. Eventually, the disease spread all over West Africa.
Going global
Since the first Ebola cases were documented in West Africa back in December 2013 until now, the virus has come to infect over 8,000 people and kill more than 4,000 of its victims.
Apart from West Africa, cases of Ebola have so far been reported in Spain, the US and Senegal. The good news is that these countries have until now had just one or two Ebola cases on their hands.
The origin of the virus
For the time being, scientists cannot say how and why patient zero, i.e. the 2-year-old child, became exposed to the virus. Still, they suspect that he caught it after he ate infected meat from an animal hunted in the region.
Having analyzed the genetic makeup of several dozen strains of Ebola, researchers found that this virus entered West Africa decades ago, and that it was brought to this part of the world by an animal.
The somewhat good news is that, by the looks of it, the ongoing epidemic was caused by just one animal. This means that, for the time being at least, there are no other Ebola sources in the wild.
As detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the fact that patient zero lived in Guinea explains why it is that the virus had such an easy time spreading to other regions.
They say that, since this country sits at the intersection of three different regions, it should not come a surprise that Ebola traveled as far as it did in a fairly limited period of time.