What the U.S. Should Have Learned From Past Ebola Outbreaks

In 1995, a year into my assignment to West and Central Africa for the New York Times , I was pulled away from covering one of the conflicts then raging in that part of the continent to report on another kind of crisis, one that was new and utterly terrifying in the way it killed indiscriminately without resort to guns or violence: the Ebola virus. Although by no means medically unfamiliar, before that year’s outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), this pathogen was

Among others, these included bleeding from every orifice and projectile vomiting. By the time I reached Zaire’s capital, Kinshasa, that May, most of the front-line coverage had ended. Doctors and scientists were still at work in Kikwit trying to contain the epidemic and understand the horrifying virus better, but when I landed there by a small, chartered plane, almost all of the reporters had gone out of fear of contamination. Most anyone else who could leave the city was rushing to do so as well. This was a time of great human naivete about virulent pathogens and pandemics. In those days, I’d never seen one of the N95 respirators that became commonplace in the wake of the global spread of COVID-19; before leaving my base in Ivory Coast for Zaire, the best my local doctor could recommend was a common cotton facemask, along with surgical gloves and a paper bib to wear in the proximity of Ebola patients. Thus equipped, I interviewed relatives of people who were in the death throes of Ebola in Kikwit’s main hospital and watched others bury their dead nearby. Later, I spent an afternoon wandering a village where the virus was clearly still spreading, despite official statements from international health agencies that the Ebola outbreak had been contained. In my follow-up coverage, I lambasted wealthy nations for their role in Africa’s calamitous public health situation. This was not just a failure of recent investment, but also, in significant part, the unacknowledged legacy of minimal investment in public health and education, including medical schools, during the colonial era. Ebola was barely the tip of the iceberg. It had received such attention only because of its ease of transmission and lurid symptoms, which fed fears in the West that it would reach the rich world.

Key points

• Among others, these included bleeding from every orifice and projectile vomiting.
• By the time I reached Zaire’s capital, Kinshasa, that May, most of the front-line coverage had ended.
• Doctors and scientists were still at work in Kikwit trying to contain the epidemic and understand the horrifying virus better, but when I landed there by a small, chartered plane, almost all of the…
• Most anyone else who could leave the city was rushing to do so as well.
• This was a time of great human naivete about virulent pathogens and pandemics.