healthmedicinet

• Experts believe spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone came from one funeral
• 14 women infected at funeral for one traditional healer near Guinea border
• Event may have acted as a ‘super-spreader’ according to US scientists
• Funeral took place in Sierra Leone diamond mining community of Koindu 
• Geneticists traced outbreak by sequencing virus in 78 hospital patients

By
Julian Robinson for MailOnline

Published:
02:45 EST, 31 August 2014

|
Updated:
12:31 EST, 1 September 2014

9

View
comments

The spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone this summer stemmed from one traditional healer’s funeral where 14 women were infected, experts have claimed.

Scientists have studied the blood of recent victims and believe the funeral, in mid-May might have acted as a ‘super-spreader’ event.

They say this is comparable to a case in 2003 in a hotel in Hong Kong where one doctor from China who had SARS infected nine other guests. These in turn spread the virus within the city and to other countries such as Canada and Vietnam.

Scroll down for video 

Scientists sequenced the virus found in 78 patients treated in the Kenema Government Hospital, pictured, in northern Sierra Leone close to the borders with Guinea and Liberia

The New York Times reports that the funeral took place in the diamond-mining community of Koindu.

This lies near Guéckédou in neighbouring Guinea where the outbreak is believed to have started in December.

The newspaper reports that the healer was known for treating a ‘mysterious illness’ which then turned out to be Ebola.

Although this had already been the suspected cause, the New York Times reports that it was confirmed by geneticists at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

They are understood to have sequenced the virus found in 78 patients treated in the Kenema Government Hospital in northern Sierra Leone close to the borders with Guinea and Liberia.

The research was published in the journal Science.

The spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone this summer stemmed from one traditional healer’s funeral where 14 women were infected, experts have claimed

The New York Times reports Dr W. Ian Lipkin from Columbia University as saying: ‘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’.

The study’s co-author Dr Pardi C. Sabeti, a geneticist at Harvard, said in that time it may have been circulating in forest animals including bats and apes.

But she added that ‘it could have been circulating in humans for 10 years with little or no notice.’

  
Terrifying moment two swimmers are circled by a shark in…

• Did iCloud’s ‘Find My iPhone’ function help hacker steal…

• Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show…

• Joan Rivers’ celebrity friends take to Twitter to pray for…

• Joan Rivers’ family consider lawsuit over botched procedure…

• Girl, 5, sent home from kindergarten with horror facial…

• Revealed: Hacked nude celebrity photos had been on ‘deep…

• Royals under the radar: Kate, William and cocker spaniel…

• How the baby born with the upside-down head has defied…

• Islamist pool party at the U.S. Embassy: Militia seize…

• Missing woman ‘who helped expose pedophile sex ring…

• Forced to watch crucifixions, stonings and beheadings and…

• Cameron faces Ukip by-election bloodbath: Party set to win…

Comments (9)

what you think

• 
  
  Newest
• 
  
  Oldest
• 
  
  Best rated
• 
  
  Worst rated

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Find out now