First Ebola victim may have been infected by bats....The researchers explored an area in southeastern Guinea where 2-year-old Emile Ouamouno fell ill a year ago and died.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014 | 7:15 AM 

NEW YORK, United States (AP) — 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.

Photo shows a tree repeatedly smoked by villagers to
catch bats in the Guinean village of Meliandou, some 400
 miles (600 kms) south-east of Conakry, Guinea, believed
 to be Ebola's ground zero.

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.

The Ebola epidemic is the worst in world history, blamed for killing nearly 8,000 people across West Africa this year, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. more