At a Catholic Mission in Yambuku, an oasis of peace and efficiency in northern Congo's vast jungle forests, Mabalo Lokela, a teacher, receives an anti-malarial shot for a raging fever and headache. Sister Lucie, a Flemish nursing sister, swishes out a syringe with a weak disinfectant. The next patients are injected with the same syringe and the sick man's virus spreads.
Lokela was the first Congolese victim of a new African hemorrhagic disease that became known as Ebola fever. When Sister Lucie dies a few days later, panic erupts and hospitalized patients flee into the forest. With the convent connected to the outside world by a single primitive radio, the mission nuns can only pray and wonder if anyone will act on their cries for help.
Author had a good background of the country of Africa and the way of the people. -- Foreword Book of the Year Award Judge, 2003
Eloquent, gripping, and beautiful account of the real doctors, nurses, and victims who lived and died during that harrowing nightmare. -- Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone"
I was riveted all the way to the end. -- Foreword Book ot the Year Award Judge, 2003
This book opened my awareness to a part of history I knew little about. -- Foreword Book of the Year Award Judge, 2003
From the Publisher
Winner of Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Gold Award for 2002 -- Historical Fiction ForeWord’s Book of the Year program has become one of the most prestigious honors for university and independent presses and their authors. Awards were announced on May 30th, 2003 at Book Expo America.
William T. Close (1924-2009) was educated in England, France, and the United States. During the Second World War, he served as a troop carrier pilot in Europe. Dr. Close was a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. In May 2001, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Utah. Before his death in early 2009, he was a village doc in Big Piney, Wyoming, and a published author.
Prior to settling in Wyoming, he spent 16 years in Africa, arriving in the Congo just before independence and just in time for the mutinies, coup d'états, and rebellions that marked the history of that country. For the first year, he was responsible for surgery as one of only three doctors in the capital city's 2,000-bed hospital. He became the personal physician to the president and chief doctor for the Congolese Army. In 1967, he took over the management of the general hospital.
Beyond the Storm details Dr. Close's extraordinary experiences during the uncontrollable human storms that crashed repeatedly in the Congo after independence. In July of 1960 chaos erupted when Belgium turned over power to Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister, but kept the keys to the nation's prodigious mineral wealth. Two men, Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the newly appointed army chief of staff, and William T. Close, M.D., volunteer surgeon in the general hospital, met, and their lives became intertwined during the next sixteen years.
In 1976, during the first Ebola fever outbreak in the Congo, he supervised logistics for the international team of scientists dealing with the epidemic. In 1995, he acted as a liaison between the Centers for Disease Control, the Zairian/Congolese government and many concerned international organizations during a renewed epidemic of Ebola. Between 1994 and 1996, he was in the Congo three times to rebuild the nine major operating rooms and emergency services in the general hospital, which had fallen into total disrepair. It was during two of those visits that Dr. Close saw his old boss, President Mobutu -- the last visit coming a few weeks before Mobutu fled the country and died of cancer in Morocco.
Dr. Close is the author of the bestseller Ebola: Through the Eyes of the People dealing with the people and events involved in the first epidemic. A Doctor's Life: Unique Stories is a collection of cameos illustrating the human aspect of medicine in New York, Africa, and the Rocky Mountains. His daughter, Glenn Close, wrote the foreword. Subversion of Trust, Dr. Close's first novel, deals with the conflict between an aggressive for-profit HMO that has taken over a regional medical center in the Rocky Mountains and the rural practices that must be acquired in order to achieve financial rewards for the managed care company's stockholders.
Through his practice, example, teaching and writing Dr. Close exemplified a professional ideal that combines scientific excellence with compassionate care. His continued contributions to the profession included mentorship, lectures, radio interviews and writings that tug at the hearts of patients, doctors and nurses caught up in the frenetic pace of the medical industry. His writings continue to be an inspiration to young people who are entering the profession at a time when patient centered care needs to be reemphasized.
For more information on the work of Dr. William T. Close, please check out the website: www.williamtclosemd.com.
This review is from: Ebola: Through the Eyes of the People (Paperback)
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a deadly virus currently spreading from Gabon to the Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately, it today's world of international transportation and air travel, Ebola outbreaks offer very real risks of being spread quickly to virtually any part of the world (including the United States) is just a matter of hours. William Close draws upon his more than 16 years in Africa (he became personal physician to the President of Congo and chief doctor to the Congolese Army) and his expertise with respect to Ebola to provide an eloquent, gripping, chilling account of the doctors, nurses and victims affected by the Ebola virus in the Catholic mission and surrounding villages now the focus of teams of international doctors and scientists trying to understand and contain the latest lethal outbreak. Ebola: Through The Eyes Of The People is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the Ebola threat, both realized and potential, and its status as a modern day plague with horrific potential.
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This review is from: Ebola: Through the Eyes of the People (Paperback)
To be truthful, I was a bit disappointed when the author admitted at the beginning of the book that this was a novel. I had expected more technical information. However, the book was a very good read and gave an interesting perspective of the first Ebola outbreak from the view of the people directly involved - the villagers and the Catholic missionaries. Dr. Close bases this book on fact, but for the sake of interest, combined some characters and filled in some holes in the story with what he believes happened. Since he was there, nobody can argue the facts. The book does not give any technical information on Ebola and how it works and how it is stopped. It does however, go into decriptions of how this awful disease is spread and how it affects entire villages. Without the technical details, the book is a quick read and though a subject like this could not be called enjoyable, I found it fascinating to read.
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This review is from: Ebola: Through the Eyes of the People (Paperback)
This is a really good book. It keeps you coming back for more without being too intense. It nicely describes the horrible nature of the epidemic without too many of the horrific details. By the end I felt like I knew the characters.
This is a really good, really well written book.
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