Ebola is a filovirus that causes Ebola virus disease (EVD), the deadliest of a dozen hemorrhagic fever diseases. Mortality rates in previous Ebola epidemics ranged between sixty and ninety percent.                 The natural reservoir of Ebola virus is the African fruit bat. Occasionally the virus passes from bats to other forest mammals that are killed for bush meat. Touching or skinning infected animals during hunting or food preparation and bat feces can transmit the virus to humans. Transmission is rare but frequent enough to cause periodic outbreaks that can spread. The 2014-2015 epidemic in West Africa began with patient zero – a two-year-old boy in Gueckedou, Guinea infected while playing in bat feces-infested soil below a hollow tree where a colony of bats nested. Perhaps he picked up a dead bat.          ...