Monday 25 August 2014

By Researchers: Ebola Started With A Toddler.

The research has showed that the ongoing epidemic of Ebola started with a chance contact of a toddler with a bat.

According to The Guardian, the group of international scientists came to such a conclusion  after having conducted the major investigation regarding the origin of the virus, which has claimed nearly 1500 of lives in West Africa.

Related: How People Are Surviving Ebola Virus

The team consisting of researchers, ecologists and anthropologists had worked on tracing the roots of the disease, speaking with people and capturing bats and other animals near the village of Meliandoua, Guinea, where the outbreak is believed to have started last December and later spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

Comparable: Health Minister Reveals Two New Ebola Cases

The research results suggested that Ebola was passed from colony to colony of migratory fruit bats until it reached Guinea. Daily Mail adds that the 2-year-boy was bitten by the bat and passed the infection to his mother, both died within a 1-week period. While scientists believe that bats are main carriers of the virus, it is stated that its rare for them to directly transmit the disease to a human as the previous epidemics were caused by meat of the infected animals sold by hunters.

Nigeria got affected by the deadly virus as the Liberian-American man Patrick Sawyer, who traveled to the country, got admitted to a Lagos hospital where he died last month.

Meanwhile Ebola keeps claiming new lives in Nigeria: another nurse, Obi Justina Ejelonu, who attended to Patrick Sawyer died about a week ago in a quarantine facility in Lagos. However it was made known August 23 that her fiance Dennis previously hospitalized with the symptoms similar to those ones of Ebola disease, was discharged from Ebola Isolation Centre as not being infected.

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