many chances to jump to a new host. Had people been coughing the virus into the air … it would have been a different story. In any case, the Ebola Sudan virus destroyed a few hundred people in central Africa the way a fire consumes a pile of straw—until the blaze burns out at the center and ends in a heap of ash—rather than smoldering around the planet, as AIDS has done, like a fire in a coal mine, impossible to put out. The Ebola virus, in its Sudan incarnation, retreated to the heart of the bush, where undoubtedly it lives to this day, cycling and cycling in some unknown host, able to shift its shape, able to mutate and become a new thing, with the potential to enter the human species in a new form.
Two months after the start of the Sudan emergence—the time was now early September 1976—an even more lethal filovirus emerged five hundred miles to the west, in a district of northern Zaire called Bumba Zone, an area of tropical rain forest populated by scattered villages and drained by the Ebola River. The Ebola Zaire strain was nearly twice as lethal as Ebola Sudan. It seemed to emerge out of the stillness of an implacable force brooding on an inscrutable intention. To thisday, the first human case of Ebola Zaire has never been identified.
In the first days of September, some unknown person who probably lived somewhere to the south of the Ebola River perhaps touched something bloody. It might have been monkey meat—people in that area hunt monkeys for food—or it might have been the meat of some other animal, such as an elephant or a bat. Or perhaps the person touched a crushed insect, or perhaps he or she was bitten by a spider. Whatever the original host of the virus, it seems that a blood-to-blood contact in the rain forest enabled the virus to move into the human world. The portal into the human race may well have been a cut on this unknown person’s hand.
The virus surfaced in the Yambuku Mission Hospital, an upcountry clinic run by Belgian nuns. The hospital was a collection of corrugated tin roofs and whitewashed concrete walls sitting beside a church in the forest, where bells rang and you heard a sound of hymns and the words of the high mass spoken in Bantu. Next door, people stood in line at the clinic and shivered with malaria while they waited for a nun to give them an injection of medicine that might make them feel better.
The mission in Yambuku also ran a school for children. In late August, a teacher from the school and some friends went on a vacation trip to the northern part of Zaire. They borrowed a Land Rover from the mission to make their journey.and they explored the country as they headed northward, moving slowly along rutted tracks, no doubt getting stuck in the mud from time to time, which is the way things go when you try to drive through Zaire. The track was mostly a footpath enclosed by a canopy of trees, and it was always in shadow, as if they were driving through a tunnel. Eventually they came to the Ebola River and crossed it on a ferry barge and continued northward. Near the Obangui River, they stopped at a roadside market, where the schoolteacher bought some fresh antelope meat. One of his friends bought a freshly killed monkey and put it in the back of the Land Rover. Any of the friends could have handled the monkey or the antelope meat while they were bouncing around in the Land Rover.
They turned back, and when the schoolteacher arrived home, his wife stewed the antelope meat, and everyone in the family ate it. The following morning he felt unwell, and so before he reported to his teaching job at the school, he stopped off at the Yambuku Hospital, on the other side of the church, to get an injection of medicine from the nuns.
At the beginning of each day, the nuns at Yambuku Hospital would lay out five hypodermic syringes on a table, and they would use them to give shots to patients all day long. They were using five needles a day to give injections to hundreds of people
Two months after the start of the Sudan emergence—the time was now early September 1976—an even more lethal filovirus emerged five hundred miles to the west, in a district of northern Zaire called Bumba Zone, an area of tropical rain forest populated by scattered villages and drained by the Ebola River. The Ebola Zaire strain was nearly twice as lethal as Ebola Sudan. It seemed to emerge out of the stillness of an implacable force brooding on an inscrutable intention. To thisday, the first human case of Ebola Zaire has never been identified.
In the first days of September, some unknown person who probably lived somewhere to the south of the Ebola River perhaps touched something bloody. It might have been monkey meat—people in that area hunt monkeys for food—or it might have been the meat of some other animal, such as an elephant or a bat. Or perhaps the person touched a crushed insect, or perhaps he or she was bitten by a spider. Whatever the original host of the virus, it seems that a blood-to-blood contact in the rain forest enabled the virus to move into the human world. The portal into the human race may well have been a cut on this unknown person’s hand.
The virus surfaced in the Yambuku Mission Hospital, an upcountry clinic run by Belgian nuns. The hospital was a collection of corrugated tin roofs and whitewashed concrete walls sitting beside a church in the forest, where bells rang and you heard a sound of hymns and the words of the high mass spoken in Bantu. Next door, people stood in line at the clinic and shivered with malaria while they waited for a nun to give them an injection of medicine that might make them feel better.
The mission in Yambuku also ran a school for children. In late August, a teacher from the school and some friends went on a vacation trip to the northern part of Zaire. They borrowed a Land Rover from the mission to make their journey.and they explored the country as they headed northward, moving slowly along rutted tracks, no doubt getting stuck in the mud from time to time, which is the way things go when you try to drive through Zaire. The track was mostly a footpath enclosed by a canopy of trees, and it was always in shadow, as if they were driving through a tunnel. Eventually they came to the Ebola River and crossed it on a ferry barge and continued northward. Near the Obangui River, they stopped at a roadside market, where the schoolteacher bought some fresh antelope meat. One of his friends bought a freshly killed monkey and put it in the back of the Land Rover. Any of the friends could have handled the monkey or the antelope meat while they were bouncing around in the Land Rover.
They turned back, and when the schoolteacher arrived home, his wife stewed the antelope meat, and everyone in the family ate it. The following morning he felt unwell, and so before he reported to his teaching job at the school, he stopped off at the Yambuku Hospital, on the other side of the church, to get an injection of medicine from the nuns.
At the beginning of each day, the nuns at Yambuku Hospital would lay out five hypodermic syringes on a table, and they would use them to give shots to patients all day long. They were using five needles a day to give injections to hundreds of people
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