A review of THE COMING PLAGUE: NEWLY EMERGING DISEASES IN A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE by Laurie Garrett, published in 1994. Chapter 5: Yambuku – EBOLA
Some of Conn’s samples still contained live Ebola virus
On November 26, 1976 U.S. Peace Corps volunteer Del Conn told team members in the Yanbuku area that his head and back were killing him. The pain came on suddenly, and then hung on relentlessly. Conn, who had previously worked in a small hospital outside Kinshasa, had joined the Yambuku survey effort ten days earlier and was assisting Piot in collecting blood samples and village data. He had also helped van der Gröen prepare microscopic samples of Ebola-infected tissues for study in a field lab the Belgian had recently constructed in the mission. A month later researchers would learn that some of Conn’s samples, despite ultraviolet radiation exposure and acetone treatment, still contained live Ebola virus.
Procedures required that Conn be placed under strict quarantine
Though Conn’s temperature was only slightly above normal, team members were worried. They notified commission headquarters that it might be necessary to activate the complex system of medical evacuation that had been worked out in detail after days of negotiations with the governments of Zaire, South Africa, the United States, and France. Those procedures required that Conn be placed under strict quarantine for thirty-six hours and airlifted out of the region if his condition worsened.
The Zairian Air Force’s pilots refused to fly their helicopter to Yambuku
By November 29, Conn’s condition had worsened. His fever was up slightly, blood chemistry showed classic signs of viral infection, back pains were severe, and he was nauseated. In Yambuku, Johnson, Dr. Dennis Courtois, and Isaacson tried to prepare Ebola antiserum from recovered patients’ blood, but power failures shut down their centrifuge and other equipment necessary to ensure safe plasma preparation. The Zairian Air Force’s pilots refused to fly their helicopter to Yambuku, fearing Conn might give them the disease. Conn was loaded into the back of a Land-Rover and driven the bumpy road to Bumba at ten miles per hour, groaning all the way. When they reached Bumba, continued Air Force fear was obvious: no plane awaited them. Panic among the townspeople was so great that the Land-Rover was not permitted to leave the center of the Bumba landing strip, under the tropical sun. Conn, wearing a tight rubber respirator mask was miserable. Convinced their colleague had Ebola, they hand-administered a unit of Sophie’s antiserum into Conn while laying in the back of the Land-Rover.
Doctors noticed blood oozing
After a series of unbelievable problems, Johnson, now fuming mad, contacted U.S. Embassy officials and a C-141 Starlifter was dispatched from Madrid, arriving in Kinshasa six hours later. Although he received a variety of analgesics, Conn’s pain was acute, he was running a fever of over 102°F, and the hours inside the wet, coffin-sized plastic cocoon were driving him crazy. His anxiety reached a zenith when the doctors noticed blood oozing out of a tiny puncture hole through which his intravenous feeder was inserted. Hemorrhaging was the key symptom of Ebola. Conn had to be heavily sedated.
Conn, it seemed, had ‘discovered’ another new virus
When Conn was finally removed from his nightmarish cocoon in Johannesburg, his entire body was covered with a florid measleslike rash that was not usually seen with Ebola but had been noted in some Machupo and Marburg cases. He had been severely ill for six days before reaching a hospital. Clearly, the commisssion’s contingency plans had failed completely when put to the test. Johnson was enraged, and scientists still deployed in the field were extremely distressed. Behind the scenes still more misadventures occurred. When Conn’s blood was submitted to repeated examinations, no Ebola viruses could be found. Nor could the South African team find evidence of any other known human pathogen. Twenty years later, the cause of Conn’s illness would remain a complete mystery. Conn, it seemed, had ‘discovered’ another new virus.