By Steven Johnson
Nov. 17, 2020
FEVERS, FEUDS, AND DIAMONDS
Ebola and the Ravages of History
By Paul Farmer
In the early months of 2014, a team of medical professionals from the global health organization Doctors Without Borders began tracking a troubling outbreak, centered in Guéckédou, a city of 200,000 in southern Guinea near the country’s borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone. The affliction had cholera-like symptoms, and seemed unusually lethal. Initial observers suspected that it might be a recurrence of Lassa fever, caused by the Lassa filovirus endemic in West Africa. But by March, the sheer body count — and a few telltale symptoms — began pointing toward a more deadly pathogen. Blood samples were dispatched to France on an overnight flight and on March 21, a team of virologists in Lyon identified the killer: Zaire Ebola.