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Quirks and Quarks

CSI Ebola: Tracking the Outbreak's Origins

Researchers think a tree might harbour the secret of how the most recent Ebola outbreak might have jumped from animals to humans.
CBC Radio ·
This now-burned out tree in the village of Meliandou, Guinea, is thought to have been the home of the bat colony that transmitted Ebola to humans. (Fabian Leendertz, EMBO Molecular Medicine (cc-by-4.0))
When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first recognized by health authorities last April, a high priority - after caring for the sick, and attempting to limit is spread - was trying to find the source of the outbreak.

So, researchers - including Jan Gogarten, a PhD student at McGill University, currently working with the Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms research group at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin - were rushed to the area to try to track down the source of the outbreak.

They searched nearby wilderness areas to see if apes or other primates were also dying of Ebola - a common way an outbreak moves to humans. But eventually they found what they suspect to be the source in a bat colony, living in a tree in the village, where the first reported human infection in a two-year-old boy occurred.

Related Links

- Paper in EMBO Molecular Medicine
- Interview with Jan Gogarten from McGill University
- Release from Robert Koch Institute
- Live Science story

 

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