The virus may jump from one species to another." It is likely not to have even been one species of bat.
There is a possibility for the virus to mix between colonies. I don't think an individual bat or colony migrated all the way from Congo or Gabon to west Africa. There are huge colonies of bats which regularly migrate. I would not say that the virus has emerged from central Africa. The evidence is not 100% and we can only say that it is possible. They told us they regularly catch bats, like every other village in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Leendertz said: "We spent eight days in Meliandoua. This means that the risk from transmission between apes and humans would be high."įruit bats, however, are widely eaten in rural west Africa – either smoked, grilled or in a spicy soup. Rebecca Kormos, a primatologist who spent two years conducting a chimpanzee survey in Guinea, said: "The other aspect that worries me is … the human population density is high in Guinea and people forage and travel in nearly all of the forests where chimpanzees live. Primatologists and conservationists in the region who were contacted by the Observer all confirmed that vulnerable chimpanzee colonies had so far escaped. Previous outbreaks saw catastrophic death rates in gorilla and chimpanzee populations, which led some scientists to think they may be responsible for the disease spreading.Ĭhimps, gorillas, some antelopes and even pigs – which possibly eat fruit dropped to the ground by infected bats – have all been linked by the World Health Organisation to the spread of the disease, but the researchers now say no evidence has been found of other animals apart from bats being infected. Nearly all previous epidemics had been linked to the bushmeat trade, with hunters picking up dead infected animals in the forestand selling them on. Scientists have suspected for several years that bats are the wild "reservoirs" of Ebola, but direct transmission to humans is extremely rare, despite communities regularlyhunting the bats for food.
Within a week of the two-year-old boy catching the disease in Meliandoua, both he and his mother had died and it was spread to nearby communities and urban areas by mourners at a funeral. The outbreak has killed more than 1,300 people in west Africa so far, many of the deaths occurring in Liberia. These bats migrate across long distances and are commonly found in giant colonies near cities and in forests.
Leendertz said the virus had probably arrived in west Africa via an infected straw-coloured fruit bat. Professor John Watson, deputy chief medical officer, said the overall risk to the UK public remains "very low".Įarly studies suggested that a new strain of Ebola had emerged in west Africa but, according to epidemiologist Fabian Leendertz, a disease ecologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, who led the large team of scientists to Guinea, 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. News of the research came as the first confirmed case of a Briton contracting the disease emerged on Saturday night. Their research is expected to be published in a major journal in the next few weeks. They have concluded that the disease was spread by colonies of migratory fruit bats. The largest-ever outbreak of Ebola was triggered by a toddler's chance contact with a single infected bat, a team of international researchers will reveal, after a major investigation of the origins of the deadly disease now ravaging Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.Ī group of 17 European and African tropical disease researchers, ecologists and anthropologists 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 appeared in December 2013.
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