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
The Bumba quarantine was lifted
As Christmas 1976 approached, Peter Piot prepared to leave the place that had over two and a half months’ time come to feel like something of a home. American CDC scientist David Heymann had volunteered without hesitation to be the last foreign scientist in Yambuku, charged with cleanup epidemiology and, perhaps most important, giving the rest of the crew an opportunity to head home for Christmas. Years later the pair would work side by side, trying to control another, far larger, deadly epidemic. Piot glanced angrily at the military pilots laughing and guzzling beers while the huge C-130 was loaded. The Bumba quarantine having finally been lifted, hundreds of local traders and still nervous families were clamoring for spots on the huge plane. The anxious pilots left the engines running and occasionally shouted for Piot’s group to hurry. The men placed most of the lighter objects at the front of the plane, heavier crates of laboratory equipment to the rear, leaving the center open for passengers. With the few nets and ropes provided by the pilots the group did their best to secure all the cargo in place.
Piot and his bleeding and battered fellow passengers were sandwiched between heavy crates of cargo
The plane climbed steadily for several minutes until, hitting a pocket of storm turbulence, it suddenly dove a few hundred feet. The heavy crates to the rear broke loose of their nets, slamming down on the screaming passengers. The inebriated pilots responded by jerking the plane up, causing the front-loaded cargo to snap loose. Piot and his bleeding and battered fellow passengers were sandwiched between heavy crates of cargo, some of which carried thousands of samples of lethal Ebola-infected animal and human tissue and blood samples. When Peter Piot staggered off the last of a series of planes into the Christmas chill of Antwerp, he found Margarethe obviously pregnant.
A visit to the headquarters of the Sisters of the Holy heart of Maria
Dragging Piot along with him shortly after Christmas, van der Gröen marched into the headquarters of the Sisters of the Holy heart of Maria. “Our objective here is education,” the seething van der Gröen told Piot as they entered the office of the order’s Mother Superior. The meeting began calmly enough, with the two scientists applauding the Catholic education of Children in the Yambuku area – an assignation that dated back to 1935. They also noted the well-intentioned origins of the order’s medical effort. In the early 1970s members of the order had attended several days of basic medical training at the Tropical Institute in Antwerp. That was the full extent of their nursing training before venturing into the field. “But no one was thinking that if you start such a medical business, and the people of the region are receiving no support from the government of Zaire, and you give out free health care, then you must be prepared to be deluged. You must be prepared to safely give 300 shots a day. If you build something you call a hospital, then you must do the logistic planning, provide the resources, and train your personnel accordingly.” “The price for your lack of planning was high”; half the dead got Ebola in the mission hospital.