Having recently read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry to gain some insight into lessons learned that can be applied during the recent COVID-19 outbreak, I had an interest in seeing a more recent outbreak that too could help me compare the current response to outbreaks in the past. The book Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come by Richard Preston is just that book.
(Richard Preston wrote Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come).
Crisis in the Red Zone deals with the 2013 outbreak of the Ebola virus in western Africa, focusing largely on the efforts of doctors and scientists to minimize fatalities and find a cure. The countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone were the hardest hit. A toddler in Guinea named Emile had the first suspected human case of the strains that mutated with human contact to become the area of highest impact with a kind of reverse quarantine in place, where the sick are kept away from everyone else to keep the outbreak at bay. When the book Crisis in the Red Zone speaks of a red zone, Preston discussed the notion of this type of isolated area where the sick are kept away from the healthy in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.
(Dr. Sheikh Umar Khan died of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. Doctors Without Borders withheld the experimental drug ZMapp, which could have saved his life. Dr. Khan‘s story was an important feature of the book Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come).
Doctors Without Borders came to the aid of the Ebola outbreak to serve the community and stop the disease transmission. Dr. Sheikh Umar Khan was a leading doctor from Sierra Leone specializing in viral hemorrhagic fever, including Ebola and Lassa Fever, which is what brought the young doctor to the site of the outbreak. Part of the notion of a non-fiction thriller written by Richard Preston was to humanize the disease through the eyes of Khan. Khan caught the disease, yet through decision making made by Doctors Without Borders, the experimental and available drug ZMapp, which could have saved Khan‘s life, was never offered. Through a chain of decisions that came later, the drug was offered to American health care practitioners. Some of those doctors survived the disease.
(The Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone stopped being a hospital because of the Ebola outbreak that began in 2013. The hospital was featured in Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come).
The outbreak of Ebola that is depicted in Crisis in the Red Zone was solidly traced from origin to containment, in my non-scientific opinion. The Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone was itself a casualty of the Ebola outbreak, in part because the disease onset was much larger than the ability of the hospital and staff to handle in the face of all that the disease entailed. The book focused largely on just the Kenema hospital, which was worthy, without digging deeply into the more than 11,000 people who died, throughout Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Some of that fuller story would have been helpful. Also, there is minimal discussion of the World Health Organization or America‘s response to the outbreak, which would have made for a fuller telling of the outbreak. Overall, I rate Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come by Richard Preston at 3.5-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
Matt – Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Matt Lynn Digital 