Blame rained down on individuals, families and communities who were described by international agencies as willfully resisting sensible public health measures. When people began in late 2013 to fall ill in Guinea with Ebola, the illness, transmitted through sweat, saliva, vomit, feces, and other bodily fluids, spread rapidly and soon crossed borders. The book centers on the Ebola outbreak of 2014 in three West African countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - nations that are medically impoverished. "We have to stop telling ourselves horror stories about an unstoppable mutant virus," Farmer writes, "because those stories often legitimate our inaction." In fact, there's a great deal that can be done to save Ebola patients - if only the sufferers are deemed worth saving.
Supportive measures like restoring lost body fluids go a long way in saving lives, because they give a person's immune system time to kick in and can lead to recovery from the fever, vomiting, and severe diarrhea that often do characterize the illness.
Only rarely, in fact, do Ebola patients bleed out, and the death rate need not come anywhere near 90%. That's an almost inevitable takeaway from reading Richard Preston's best-selling The Hot Zone ("you are almost certainly doomed" if you catch Ebola, Preston claimed) or watching movies based in viral sensationalism.Īnthropologist and physician Paul Farmer, based at Harvard Medical School, turns this view of Ebola on its head in his eye-opening, densely detailed, and riveting Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. Unless you're an infectious-disease expert, what might pop into your mind are phrases like "bleeding from the eyes and mouth," and "90% death rate," coupled with images of horrific contagion set in remote African villages.
Suppose you're participating in one of those word-association tests, where someone gives you a word and you're to respond with the first things that enter your mind. Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History, by Paul Farmer
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