Studying Ebola, Then Dying From It
In late May, a woman was admitted to the Kenema Government Hospital’s maternity ward in Sierra Leone after a bloody miscarriage. Augustine Goba, director of the hospital’s diagnostic laboratory and my longtime collaborator, ran a series of sensitive molecular tests and detected the first case of Ebola infection in the hospital, and one of the first confirmed cases in the country. Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone’s leading virologist, and other medical staff members isolated the patient and wore gloves, gowns and masks while treating her. She survived and made a full recovery, and no one else was infected.
Had this patient been one of the first cases of Ebola in West Africa, the hospital’s rapid diagnosis and expert handling might have helped control the outbreak quickly.… Seguir leyendo »