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A case of the Ebola virus' spread to Senegal the first time a new country has been hit by the outbreak since July - has forced scientists to find how the virus spread to various countries. One such finding has led to the exact factor that led to the spread of the virus in Sierra Leone a traditional healer.
According to the study, researchers found that the virus had reached the country because of one traditional healer, who is said to have died of a mysterious illness; later found to be Ebola. The woman died, and it is thought that 14 women who attended her funeral, were infected. (Read: 13 more dead, including 5 doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo)
According to blood tests performed on recent victims, the funeral, performed in mid-May is said to have acted as a 'super-spreader'. This is similar to how SARS spread to Canada and Vietnam.
According to the New York Times the funeral took place in the diamond-mining community of Koindu. Situated near Gu ck dou, neighbouring Guinea (the place where the outbreak is said to have started in December), Sierra Leone was a viable target for the virus.
The New York Times reported that the healer was known for treating a mysterious illness that later turned out to be Ebola. Although the healer was thought to be the cause for the spread, the belief was confirmed by geneticists at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. The report was published in the journal Science.
In a statement to The New York Times, Dr W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University said, 'It's frightening that a single event could catalyse a whole outbreak, but that's what it looks like happened. He added that the research was a 'really nice piece of work'.
Experts also discovered that the West African strain of Ebola was different from the one that has been circulating in Central Africa, thousands of miles away, since the mid 1970s. But the newspaper reports that the two 'probably diverged as far back as 2004'.
What does the study say?
The study's co-author Dr Pardi C. Sabeti, a geneticist at Harvard, found that the virus may have been circulating in wild animals (found in the forests of West Africa) including bats and apes, and could have been circulating in humans for about 10 years, without being noticed. (Read: WHO believes Ebola will affect 20,000 people in West Africa)
Apart from that, scientists say that the recent findings may be extremely crucial for the formulation of strain-specific vaccines against the Ebola virus. This could also help in better testing facilities to diagnose patients with a low viral load.
What is it?
The Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe condition caused by a virus from the Filoviridae family. Known to be a condition that is transmitted from animals to humans, this virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal.
How is it transmitted? What are its causes?
According to scientists there are five different types of the virus, all of which have the potential to infect humans. According to the WHO (World Health Organisation) this disease can be transmitted from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. In humans the disease can be transmitted by the following methods:
To know more read Ebola virus causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and prevention)
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