How Ebola Started in Africa
A fresh report by DailyMail have proved that it was a two-year-old boy from a remote village in Guinea that first contacted the deadly Ebola virus. According to the report, Epidemiologists believe the boy from the village of Meliandou, Guéckédou province, suffered with fever, black stools and vomiting for just four days until he died on December 6.
Seven days later, his mother died too, followed by his three-year-old
sister, who fell sick on Christmas Day and was dead before she could see the
New Year.
Guéckédou sits by the borders with both Sierra Leone and Liberia. In a
region where borders are porous, it gave the Ebola virus a route into three
nations where medical infrastructure is under strain
at the best of times.
Researchers charted the spread to nearby communities by two mourners at the
funeral of the original victim's grandmother, who died January 1, and the
village midwife, who died February 2, but not before infecting one of her
relatives who had cared for her.
But it wasn't until March that the mystery sickness was recognized as Ebola
and, by that time, dozens of people had died in eight communities in Guinea
and suspected cases were emerging in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Nine months after the first suspected case, described in The New England
Journal of Medicine, and the West African Ebola outbreak, centred on Guinea,
Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the worst in history with nearly 1,000 victims
so far. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it is an
international health emergency likely to continue spreading for
months.
No comments