ebola epidemic Researchers: 1stvictim may have been infected by bats

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A team of researchers think they may have pinpointed how the Ebola epidemic in West Africa started — with a small boy playing in a hollowed-out tree where infected bats lived.

The researchers explored an area in southeastern Guinea where 2-year-old Emile Ouamouno fell ill a year ago and died. Health officials believe he was the first case in the epidemic, which wasn’t recognized until spring.

The Ebola virus wasn’t found in the bats they tested so they weren’t able to prove the source, the scientists reported in a study published Tuesday. But they believe the boy got Ebola from the furry, winged creatures that had lived in the hollow tree.

“As a scientist, I can say it’s a possible scenario,” said one of the study’s authors, Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.

An outside expert said the researchers’ work was thought-provoking.

“They didn’t find smoking guns” but perhaps broadened the thinking about what sparked the epidemic, said Stephen Morse, a Columbia University infectious-disease expert.