From the book.
“First, they suspected (based on earlier studies) that the reservoir is a mammal. Second, they noted that Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Africa had always been linked to forests. (Even the urban epidemic at Kikwit had begun with that charcoal maker out amid the woods.) It seemed safe to assume, therefore, that the reservoir is a forest creature. Third, they noted also that Ebola outbreaks had been sporadic in time—with years sometimes passing between one episode and the next. Those gaps implied that infection of humans from the reservoir is a rare occurrence. Rarity of spillover in turn suggested two possibilities: that either the reservoir itself is a rare animal or that it’s an animal only rarely in contact with people.”
“Kikwit, in Zaire, lay about three hundred miles east of Kinshasa. It differed from Yambuku, and Mayibout 2, and the timber camp outside Booué in one crucial way: It was a city of two hundred thousand people. It contained several hospitals. It was connected to the wider world in a way that those other outbreak sites weren’t. But like them it was surrounded by forest.
The first identified case in the Kikwit outbreak was a forty-two-year-old man who worked in or near that forest and probably, to some small extent, disturbed it. He farmed several patches of cleared land, planting corn and cassava, and made charcoal from timber, all at a spot five miles southeast of the city. How did he get his wood supply, how did he clear daylight for his gardens? Presumably by cutting trees. This man fell sick on January 6, 1995, and died of a hemorrhagic fever a week later.
By that time he had directly infected at least three members of his family, all fatally, and launched the infection into his wider circle of social contacts.
Excerpt From
Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus
David Quammen