A team of international researchers have concluded after a major investigation that the largest-ever outbreak of Ebola was caused by a chance contact a toddler had with a single infected bat.
The group of 17 European and African tropical disease researchers, ecologists and anthropologists had spent three weeks talking to people and capturing bats and other animals near the village of Meliandoua in remote eastern Guinea, where the present epidemic surfaced in December 2013.
Their research, which is expected to be published in a major journal in the next few weeks, proved that the disease was passed from colony to colony of migratory fruit bats until it reached Guinea.
Their early studies had suggested the emergence of a new strain of Ebola in West Africa but according to epidemiologist, Fabian Leendertz, it is likely the virus in Guinea is closely related to the one known as Zaire ebolavirus, identified more than 10 years ago in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Leendertz pointed out that there was the likelihood that the virus had arrived in West Africa through an infected straw-coloured fruit bat which had a chance contact with a kid. The bats migrate across long distances and are commonly found in giant colonies near cities and in forests.
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