By By Martin Laine Aug 10, 2014 in World Researchers believe that the first human to come down with Ebola and touching off the largest outbreak in history was a two-year-old boy living in a remote Guinean village near the borders of Sierra Leone and Liberia. The boy’s mother, three-year-old sister and grandmother all died of the same symptoms in quick succession. At the time, no one knew what had killed them. Given the symptoms, it could have been one of any number of diseases. “The feeling was fright,” said Dr. Kalissa N’fansoumane, the local hospital director. Many of his hospital staff were afraid to come to work, and he had to persuade them. The disease continued to spread. Two mourners from the grandmother’s funeral carried the disease to their village, and a health care worker carried it to another village, where he and his doctor both died. They, in turn, had infected relatives from other towns. The fatal disease was not identified as Ebola until March 6, and by that time dozens of people had died in Guinea, and cases were beginning to surface in Liberia and Sierra Leone, three nations ill-equipped to respond to a major epidemic. At the end of March, the organization Doctors Without Borders warned it would be difficult to contain this outbreak because it had already spread to so many locations. Also, Ebola had been unknown in this region of Africa, so health care workers did not immediately suspect it, and health care workers have suffered heavy losses: 140 have become infected and 80 have died. According to the The unnamed boy died Dec. 6 in a village in the Guedeckou region of southeastern Guinea, after falling ill with vomiting, fever, and diarrhea, according to an article in the New York Times. How the boy contracted the disease is not known. Animal carriers include fruit bats, chimpanzee, and monkeys, according to the World Health Organization lwebsiteThe boy’s mother, three-year-old sister and grandmother all died of the same symptoms in quick succession. At the time, no one knew what had killed them. Given the symptoms, it could have been one of any number of diseases.“The feeling was fright,” said Dr. Kalissa N’fansoumane, the local hospital director. Many of his hospital staff were afraid to come to work, and he had to persuade them.The disease continued to spread.Two mourners from the grandmother’s funeral carried the disease to their village, and a health care worker carried it to another village, where he and his doctor both died. They, in turn, had infected relatives from other towns.The fatal disease was not identified as Ebola until March 6, and by that time dozens of people had died in Guinea, and cases were beginning to surface in Liberia and Sierra Leone, three nations ill-equipped to respond to a major epidemic.At the end of March, the organization Doctors Without Borders warned it would be difficult to contain this outbreak because it had already spread to so many locations. Also, Ebola had been unknown in this region of Africa, so health care workers did not immediately suspect it, and health care workers have suffered heavy losses: 140 have become infected and 80 have died.According to the World Health Organization , 1,779 cases have been reported with 961 deaths. The numbers are rising daily, and at the rate, the number of cases will be greater than the total of all previous outbreaks combined. More about Ebola, guedeckou, Epidemic Ebola guedeckou Epidemic