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Name: Crisis in the Red Zone
Rating: 4.6 (35 reviews)
Author: Richard Preston

Richard Preston

The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come

4.6 (35 Bewertungen)

24 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Learn what happened on the ground during the 2014 outbreak.

Like many people around the world, you may have been glued to the news as the Ebola crisis unfolded in the summer of 2014. But only now, piecing together hundreds of interviews with the survivors, can we truly understand what happened in West Africa.

Some mysteries remain, but many answers have emerged thanks to genetic research and the blood samples that were taken throughout the epidemic. Scientists have identified precisely where the disease started, where it moved and how it changed.

This is a tale of the people on the front lines, the sacrifices that were made trying to control an increasingly desperate situation and how this virus preys upon the very behaviors that define our humanity.

A short warning before we begin: These blinks contain descriptions of blood, death, miscarriage and abortion.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

who the unlikely first victim of the Ebola outbreak was;
which experimental drug saved the lives of health workers in the crisis zone; and
how the outbreaks in 1976 and 2014 required the same solution.

The Ebola virus first emerged in Zaire, Africa in 1976.

On September 9, 1976, a pregnant woman named Sembo Ndobe arrived at the Yambuku Catholic Mission Hospital in Zaire, Africa – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of the nurses, Sister Beata, began to help the woman. She immediately saw that the woman was experiencing troubling symptoms, including a fever, inflamed eyes and bleeding gums.

Sister Beata believed that Ms. Ndobe had a form of malaria or a disease known as blackwater fever. While delivering her patient’s child, Sister Beata did what she always did – she used her bare hands.

But this was no typical delivery. Ms. Ndobe was hemorrhaging blood from her birth canal, and the bleeding only worsened once Sister Beata removed her stillborn child. Ms. Ndobe died that day from blood loss and shock. This was not unusual – many women in Africa died from hemorrhage during childbirth.

Five days later, however, Sister Beata began to feel extremely sick. First, she experienced fatigue and fever. This was soon followed by vomiting, diarrhea and severe pain that moved from her abdomen to her spine. Eventually, Sister Beata was projectile vomiting and there was blood in it. Before long, her vomit went from red to black. Her stool was also turning black. She was hemorrhaging blood, and her insides were decomposing.

On September 19, Father Sango Germain, Sister Beata’s friend and colleague, came to her bedside to deliver her last rites. By this time, a rash had developed across Sister Beata’s torso, and her face was expressionless and mask-like. Her eyes were red and inflamed. As Father Germain prayed, Sister Beata began to cry, causing Father Germain to cry as well.

After touching Sister Beata’s forehead and hands with the sign of the cross, Father Germain wiped his friend’s bloody tears away with the same cloth he used to wipe his own tears. Sister Beata soon died. Father Germain died 13 days later.

Before long, the Yambuku Catholic Mission Hospital was filled with patients suffering from the same symptoms as Sister Beata. Nurses began to leave, fearful of this unholy disease. But one nurse did manage to call for help.

After a virologist visited the village, researchers at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia named the mysterious disease.

On September 23, 1976, Jean Jacques Muyembe-Tamfun arrived at the Yambuku Catholic Mission Hospital to find the place filthy and practically deserted. The beds were empty and soaked with bodily fluids. Basins were left on dirty floors, filled with putrid substances. It was a disturbing scene.

Muyembe, a virologist, wasn’t sure what kind of illness had taken over this area. He thought it could be typhoid fever. He expected to examine some patients, but none was available. The next morning, Muyembe was taken to see a young nurse who had just passed away.

Ebola is a highly contagious and deadly virus that emerged again in 2014, in West Africa’s Makona Triangle.

An Ebola particle is 80 nanometers wide, 1,000 nanometers long and made up of only six proteins. But if one particle enters your body, it can latch onto a cell and quickly turn it into an Ebola-particle production factory. Those particles will latch on to more cells, and the process will continue until your body is taken over.

Unlike other viruses that attack one area, like your sinuses or throat, Ebola attacks everything except for the skeleton and the large muscles attached to the skeleton. Causing diarrhea, projectile vomiting and blood hemorrhaging, Ebola is extremely contagious. In fact, one tiny drop of blood can contain 100 million particles of Ebola. Even touching the sweat of an infected person can lead to infection.

As the virus emerged, the Kenema Government Hospital tried desperately to contain the crisis.

By March 2014, the virus had left the village of Meliandou. A relative of the midwife had also become infected, as did mourners at her funeral.

In late February, a woman from the village of Kpondu in Sierra Leone, Sia Wanda Koniono, traveled to Kissidougou, Guinea. The passenger next to her was sick and sweaty. When she returned to Sierra Leone, she started to feel ill. Ms. Koniono’s neighbor, a well-respected healer by the name of Menindor, tried to help.

The unique characteristics of the Makona Triangle led to many challenges in controlling the outbreak.

The Makona Triangle is comprised of villages spread across the borders of three countries. However, there are more than just three languages spoken there. When staff from the Kenema Government Hospital went to check the area, one of the members, Michael Gbakie, could speak four languages – Hrio, Mende, Kono and English.

But when they arrived at a village to treat a woman who’d tested positive for Ebola, the people spoke Kissi. Fortunately, the ambulance driver, Sahr Nyokor, spoke Kissi and served as an interpreter. This language barrier was only one of the challenges health officials faced there.

As things worsened, medical staff fell ill and fear increased.

In May, there were only a few patients at the Lassa fever ward in the Kenema Government Hospital. But by June, they were exceeding capacity. It became practically impossible to keep up with the rapidly worsening conditions. Nurses witnessed a continual horror show of agony, death and deteriorating patients.

Patients were soon doubling up in beds. There was a dangerous shortage of biohazard suits. To make matters worse, the virus started to reach the staff members themselves. While the team from the Kenema Government Hospital were visiting another village, the ambulance driver Sahr Nyokor visited friends at a nearby home. Not wanting to scare them, he didn’t wear a protective suit.

When key personnel became sick, debates about an experimental vaccine heated up.

Soon after Lucy May passed, Auntie wasn’t feeling well. Nor were the three nurses who’d helped in the operation. When Auntie passed on August 5, it was a devastating blow to the entire hospital. There were more screams of agony when she finally stopped breathing. It seemed as though the entire facility hung under a dark cloud of doom.

More and more staff members abandoned their posts, making a barely manageable operation even worse. And then the unthinkable happened. The internationally renowned head of the Lassa and Ebola ward, Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, fell sick.

Though many died, some people defied the odds and survived.

Dr. Khan died on July 29, a national hero and beloved colleague to many. As it turned out, ZMapp would be successful in treating victims of the virus.

Another Ebola ward on the front lines of the outbreak was run by an organization known as Samaritan’s Purse, at the Eternal Love Winning Africa Hospital (ELWA) in Monrovia, Liberia. Like the hospital in Kenema, this one was pushed beyond its limits, and some of its staff had become infected.

Much like 1976, the 2014 virus subsided when people began to change their behavior.

Another remarkable survival story is that of Jean Jacques Muyembe-Tamfun, the virologist who first encountered Ebola in 1976 in Zaire. By all accounts, having his bare hands covered in the blood of an Ebola victim should have guaranteed an infection, and yet it didn’t. He went on to be one of the most respected medical teachers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Another man who deserves credit for stopping the 1976 outbreak is Dr. Jean Francois Ruppol, a medical director working for the Belgian government. On September 28, he was called in to help quarantine the area. He did so by invoking the Ancient Rule.

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Worum geht es in Crisis in the Red Zone?

Crisis in the Red Zone (2019) presents an engrossing account from the front lines of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. From the first infected patient through the many lives claimed before the crisis was resolved, this is a tragic and hopeful story of what happens when a hidden and dangerous virus reveals itself.

Wer Crisis in the Red Zone lesen sollte

Anyone curious about the Ebola virus
Those interested in epidemiology and virology
Fans of real-life heroism and sacrifice

Über den Autor

Richard Preston is an award-winning author who has taught nonfiction writing at both the University of Iowa and Princeton University. His previous books include The Hot Zone (1994), The Wild Trees (2007) and The Demon in the Freezer (2007).

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