I am reading the 1995 book “Ebola” by Dr. William T. Close. It is an account of the 1976 Ebola epidemic in Zaire, Africa. The outbreak centered on a Roman Catholic hospital in the jungle. A stranger came to the hospital and died in a few days. No one knew the disease he had. Soon after that staff members and other patients began to suffer from the disease and die. Being afraid of what was happening at the hospital, the people went back to their villages, thus spreading the disease.

The course of the disease was the people had an extremely high fever, terrible headaches and abdominal pains. Then they would have violent vomiting and diarrhea leading to dehydration and weakness. The extreme pain and fever would persist until they died a few days later. The hospital had little medicine so they could just give out aspirin to fight the pain. It made me think that thousands of people in Africa today are suffering in the same way, many without much medical care. Men, women, children and babies died in this way.

Out of fear the village leaders isolated their villages, not letting anyone in or out. This was the best thing they could have done. The disease is self-defeating in that it kills most the people who get it. If they do not infect others, the disease will stop. Quarantine is the way to fight it. In all, hundreds of people died in Zaire in the two months it was active. It was good that the epidemic started in a rural area with relatively few people. It seems that today the disease is in major cities where huge numbers of people can be infected. It will be harder to isolate it in the cities.

It is a terrible disease that causes horrible suffering. It must be controlled.

 Dr. Stephen DeFor, Austin