A Growing Epidemic | Breakthrough

2014, in West Africa, the Ebola virus continues its exponential spread. Hospitals are swamped with patients, and the already weak health care infrastructure begins to collapse. Virologists from around the world come to help. Dr. Daniel Bausch, a specialist in viral hemorrhagic fevers, is one of them. He’s dealt with killer outbreaks before, but the situation at the Kenema hospital in Sierra Leone is unlike anything he’s encountered.

“That whole experience in Kenema almost seems like kind of a bad dream. You know, you dream that you’re someplace that you know that everybody’s getting Ebola and then dying, and it seems like something that can’t really be real. Ebola is not an easy thing to die from. It’s not only that you die, but it’s a very painful disease.”

The hospital in Kenema quickly turns into Sierra Leone’s largest Ebola treatment unit. In the fall of 2014, Ian Crozier becomes its lead clinician. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this particular fire. Not only does it kill a lot of people, it kills them very aggressively and at a pace that is shocking. You have fever, but it’s fever that comes with terrible joint and muscle ache and often riders’ teeth chattering shuttles that can knock people out of bed. Then the gastrointestinal phase begins: leaders and leaders and leaders of diarrhea and lots of vomiting.”