As Africa continues to try and find a way to get rid of the Ebola virus, Scientists with Degrees in MIT and Harvard have revealed some 300 mutations specific to this outbreak in a news paper in popular magazine, SCIENCE.

The scientist research included 78 patients in Sierra Leone who contracted the disease in May and June who they successfully sequenced the genomes of Ebola from these patients.

The current Ebola outbreak is the worst outbreak ever in Africa and has been spotted in Four countries, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

It has afflicted 3000 people, killing 1,500 people, so far and its showing no signs of slowing down.

The scientist’s research has discovered that the recent viral strains come from a related strain that left Central Africa within the past ten years.

They say that one Sierra Leonean Traditional healer had started boasting of having the cure of the virus and started treating Guinean Ebola patients who came over to seek quick help.

Then the Traditional healer contracted the disease and died, but due to the importance of the man to the area, his funeral was attended by people from all nook and cranny of Sierra Leone.

An according to the traditional funeral ways, the all took turn touching the highly infected leader before heading back to their homes acting as Transmitters of the virus.

The paper also talks about sequence of the Ebola genomes, With Harvard and MIT trained co-senior author Pardis Sabeti revealing that they are trying to work out the Sequence as fast as possible.

The toll to write the paper has been Mortally high, with five co authors dying of Ebola before the paper was even published.

Scientists have been able to track how the Ebola virus has travelled from person to person and when using mutations as markers.

Well their analysis have revealed that the ancestors of the recent Ebola outbreak some place in Central Africa roughly around 2004

It is then written that the more than 14 women got infected after they paid a visit to the funeral of the traditional healer who had been treating Guinean Ebola patients and contracted the disease.

But the ultimate surprise was when the scientist discovered two different strains of the virus came out of that one funeral, this has got them working with two theories, either the healer was infected with two different strains or that another person at the funeral was already infected.

How Genetic sequences explain the recent Ebola strain

As the virus continued its death march through Sierra Leone, one more strain reared its ugly head.

Sabeti notes that catching and recognizing the strain of Ebola is hard and risky but he says, he and his team won’t stop until the strain dies off.

Sabeti said: “We hope that this work opens up new doors for more people to work together to stop this virus now.”

Nigeria has already recorded six deaths from the Ebola virus since the late Liberian diplomat,Patrick Sawyer, brought the disease to Lagos on 20 July.

According to latest report, over 160 people are presently being observed in Port Harcourt, Rivers State for traces of Ebola after a medical doctor died in the oil rich state two weeks ago.