How local Herbalist spreads Ebola to Sierra leone

West Africa's Ebola outbreak need never have spread from Guinea, but for a herbalist in a remote village in Sierra Leone who claimed she had powers to treat the virus, an official in her country said.

'She was claiming to have powers to heal Ebola. Cases from Guinea were crossing into Sierra Leone for treatment,' Mohamed Vandi, the top medical official in the hard-hit district of Kenema, told AFP.'She got infected and died. During her funeral, women around the other towns got infected.'

Ebola has killed more than 1,220 people since it emerged in southern Guinea at the start of the year, spreading first to Liberia and cutting a gruesome and gory swathe through eastern Sierra Leone since May.

The virus is highly infectious through exposure to bodily fluids, and its early rapid spread in west Africa was attributed in part to relatives touching victims during traditional funeral rites.

The herbalist's mourners fanned out across the rolling hills of the Kissi tribal chiefdoms, starting a chain reaction of infections, deaths, funerals and more infections.

Dailymail