The devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa has so far claimed almost 5,000 lives. But it started with “Patient Zero,” a 2-year-old who died in Guinea on Dec. 6, 2013.

And now, the toddler is known by his name — Emile Ouamouno.

The New England Journal of Medicine researchers believe Emile was the first person to contract the disease, though it’s unclear how he caught the virulent virus.

Emile’s mother, 4-year-old sister and grandmother had all died of the disease by Jan. 1, 2014, according to a study published in the Oct. 9 issue of the journal. Their symptoms included fever, vomiting and black diarrhea.

Their village, Meliandou, sits in the Guéckédou region of southwestern Guinea, near Sierra Leone and Liberia, the two other countries ravaged by the disease.

Emile’s father, Etienne, showed the Daily Maverick’s Suzanne Beaukes photos of his son as a newborn.

“Emile liked to listen to the radio and his sister liked to carry babies on her back,” he told Beaukes.

“Before they suffered their gruesome deaths through severe fever, diarrhea and hemorrhaging, he and his sister would dance and play ball outside the house,” he wrote. “There used to be a lot of laughter here. Now there is only the rasping breath of tragedy as one day collapses into the next.”

Before long, the disease crossed the borders and ran rampant.

A health-care worker caught it from a midwife, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. The worker was treated at a hospital in Macenta, about 50 miles away, according to a CNN report.

A doctor who treated her also was sickened and transmitted the virus to his brothers more than 80 miles away. They all died.

In a UNICEF blog, Beaukes wrote that the long-term impact of the Ebola stigma is also financial.

“Normally, Meliandou community members sell their spinach, wheat, rice, corn, and bananas in nearby Guéckédou. But nothing is normal anymore,” she wrote.

Village Chief Amadou Kamano told her that no one buys their products anymore.

“People burnt everything out of fear … now we are even poorer than we were before,” he said of the village, which buried 14 Ebola-stricken residents.

Fassou Isidor Lama, a child protection officer for UNICEF said in the CNN report: “We noticed that with this crisis, which is almost a humanitarian catastrophe, people flee their villages, and abandon their families and their children.

“They reject the infected children and the other infected family members.”