Ebola outbreak's 'Patient Zero' identified as a two-year-old boy from Guinea named Emile Ouamouno

From Emile, the deadly virus spread around the world and has now killed close to 5,000 people

Etienne Ouamouno sits holding baby Emile, who has been identified as the first traceable patient of the current Ebola outbreak (Unicef/YouTube)

The first patient to be infected at the start of the current global Ebola outbreak has been identified as a two-year-old toddler from Guinea named Emile Ouamouno.

In a study for the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of experts had traced the disease to the village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea, by reviewing hospital documents and speaking to those involved.

Now the identity of the very first traceable person to have contracted the disease – the so-called “Patient Zero” for the outbreak that has killed more than 4,900 people – has been revealed in a report exposing the long-lasting effects of stigma surrounding Ebola.

Speaking to the Daily Maverick’s Suzanne Beaukes, Etienne Ouamouno said his son Emile had “liked to listen to the radio” and “play with a ball” before he died on 6 December last year. His death was followed by that of his older sister and then his moth – but it was not until March 2014 that the spreading virus came to the attention of the World Health Organisation.

In the space of four months after Emile’s death, his village buried a total of 14 residents. But the agony is not over for those who survived – ostracised by nearby towns and cities, they became trapped in a cycle of isolation and further poverty.

Fassou Isidor Lama, a child protection officer for the charity Unicef, said: “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.”

Etienne Ouamouno poses alongside his wife while holding one of their children, believed to be Emile's sister Philomène (Unicef/YouTube)

Amadou Kamano, the chief of Emile’s village, said residents were no longer able to sell their farmed goods in the wider region because “nobody wants to buy our products”, and fear led those living at the Ebola epicentre to desperate measures. He said: “People burned everything. Now we are even poorer than we were before.”

Charting the transmission of Ebola from Emile’s family to the wider region and abroad, epidemiologists identified Guéckédou as lying at a crossroads between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, giving the disease easy access to these three worst-affected countries.