This article comes from WeChat public account: read the ocean (ID: readabroad) author: ReadAbroad, original title: “African version of” Zhong Nanshan “: is slander, disinformation was being stoned … he has built with his life the last line of defense | read far oceans”
The epidemic situation is still severe recently. However, at this dangerous moment, many heroic “retrograde men” also appeared. It reminds me of a book I’ve ever read.
This book is a story about how African medical professionals fight the Ebola virus to the end. The name of the book is “Crisis in the Red Zone”, which literally translates to “Crisis in the Red Zone”.
The so-called “red area” refers to the quarantine area of Ebola virus; the so-called “crisis” refers to the countless difficulties faced by medical staff. So I want to translate the title of the book into “Emergency crisis”.
The author of this book is Richard Preston (Richard Preston) , a well-known non-AmericanFictional writer, author of several enduring bestsellers such as Blood Plague.
He has also won the “Emergency Fighter Award” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is the only non-medical person in history who has won this award.
In this book, the author tells us that during the period when the Ebola virus raged in Africa, more than 10,000 people died, and the economies of three countries were completely paralyzed.
But just like us today, 6 years ago, in order to stop the Ebola virus, local medical staff and international rescue workers also made great efforts and made huge sacrifices.
For example, in the country of Sierra Leone, a very brave doctor appeared.
His name is Humar Khan and he is a local infectious disease expert. He led very limited medical staff and stood on the forefront of the fight against Ebola under extremely difficult conditions.
He struggles day and night in the quarantine area, while treating patients, developing drugs, and coordinating various relationships. With his efforts, people finally defeated the virus. It can be said that this Humar Khan is “Zhong Nanshan in Africa”.
The story of this African doctor deeply moved me, and today I want to share his story here with you.
01, a big tree, a bat, a virus
We all know that the Ebola virus broke out in 2014, but if we want to trace its origin, we have to start in 2013.
There is a river in West Africa, called the “Macona River” (Makona River) . This river passes through three countries, namely : Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The river that borders these three countries is called the “Magona Triangle.”
△ The three countries of the Marcona Triangle: Guinea at the top, Sierra Leone in the middle, and Liberia at the bottom
In mid-December 2013, in the “Macona Triangle”, which belongs to Guinea, a 25-year-old young mother led her children to wash clothes by the river. When mom was washing clothes, the little boy ran to a nearby big tree to play.
The little boy found that there was a group of bats in the tree hole. So the little boy immediately made a fire and started to smoke the bat hole, and strove into the bat den with a tree stick.
Local children have always had the habit of catching bats to eat, so neither mother nor sister was fussed about the behavior of the little boy.
△ At that time, the little boy found a bat in this big tree
However, after more than ten days, on December 28, the little boy who captured the bat died in his mother’s arms. Ten more days passed, and on January 11, 2014, the little boy’s mother died.
At that time, their death did not cause much concern. Until February 2014, many similar patients appeared in Guinea, most of them women and children. People tried a variety of methods, from local traditional therapies to western medicine, but they didn’t work.
△ This little boy (still a baby in the picture) and his mother (right) were the first to pass away
People with this disease will have fever, headache, and fatigue. Patients will also vomit, not ordinary vomiting, but “jetting vomiting” -this medical term means that the stomach will contract sharply and the vomit can be sprayed into the air 2 meters high Then it will fall on the bed, on the floor, on the wall, and around them.
Also, the patient’s blood cannot be coagulated at all. As long as the skin is punctured, the blood will not stop flowing. In addition, people with this disease will continue to have diarrhea. What is excreted is not normal stool, but a black liquid. This black liquid is the dead blood cells inside the human body.
The scariest thing is that the patient will die soon, and All relatives and doctors who come into contact with the patient or the patient’s body will be infected. At this time people realized that this was an extremely terrible strange disease.
Early March, epidemiologists and foreign experts from the Guinean government began to intervene.
In the early morning of March 21, French scientists determined that the pathogen causing the outbreak was a filamentous virus. Two days later, the World Health Organization announced that the virus was called “Ebola virus”.
At the time of the announcement, 49 cases had been reported, of which 29 had died, with a fatality rate of 59%.
People are shocked by the news. Ebola virus is nothing new. It was first discovered in 1976 and has disappeared in Africa for almost 40 years.
Now, this “zombie” decades ago, I don’t know why he came back. Not only did it come back, it killed many, many people.
△ “International Doctor of Medicine” stepped into the epidemic
02, Dr. Humar Khan
Guinea has experienced this rare epidemic, and neighboring Sierra Leone is also in a critical situation, and hastened to hire an infectious disease expert.
This expert is Dr. Humarr S. Khan, Dr. Humarr S. Khan, who we talked about at the beginning. He was Sierra Leone at the time. A Chief Physician at Kenema City Government Hospital.
Why ask him? First of all, Dr. Humar Khan experienced in dealing with infectious diseases such as malaria and Lassa fever in the local area; Secondly, this doctor young and energetic, He was in charge of a research project on infectious diseases in the hospital, and is very concerned about the new epidemic.
He is a cheerful man with big eyes and a big mouth, and often has a big smile on his face. He likes to drive to and from work in his white car, and likes to watch the AC Milan team game.
△ Dr. Humar Khan
After receiving the mission, Humar Khan entered the quarantine area at the beginning and stopped the epidemic. At that time people putThe quarantine zone is called the “red zone” (red zone) , but the quarantine zone is actually a group of white tents.
These white tents are set up around the hot spots of Ebola infection, with the goal of breaking the virus’s growing infection chain in humans.
Hurmar Khan, while studying the epidemic, contacted American experts and got a special device that can detect the genetic code of Ebola virus in human blood.
At the same time, he set up a monitoring team , with his deputy Michael as the team leader, who is mainly responsible for visiting all the villages on both sides of the river and upstream and downstream to find all possible patients .
Humar Khan has no idea what kind of difficulties he will face.
Local Africans don’t understand what a “virus” is and what a microbe is. Many people don’t believe in infectious disease theory. And the local traditional funeral customs have also exacerbated the Ebola virus infection.
For example, after a person died in a local’s home, relatives would wash the body with water, and then they would use the water to wash or even drink the body. They thought that this would allow them to maintain a certain spiritual connection with the dead .
The problem is that there are 10 million Ebola virus particles on a square inch of corpse skin. These particles can stay on the skin of the rotten body for seven days. Only one particle can infect another person.
△ Ebola virus
To make matters worse, some people started making rumors. They say white foreigners do experiments on poor Africans, injecting strange chemicalsQuality, pick their organs and sell them.
Someone even compiled the rumors into text messages. For a while, the messy text messages were flying all over the sky, making people frightened.
Many young people in the region hate foreign medical staff and throw stones when they see them. Hummar Khan’s deputy, Michael Gebaki, (Michael Gbakie) I often encounter this situation:
As soon as they entered a village, they found a suspected case. Before they could be isolated, the house was surrounded by villagers. Then they started throwing stones at medical staff.
Once they were driving, they met such a group on the road. Stone bullets flew over, the car’s windshield was smashed, and the team members were almost stoned to death.
03, an unreceived message
In addition to these issues, Network communication is also an issue. The network facilities in the “Macona Triangle” are extremely poor. Experts need to send emails to each other, but they often fail to receive them.
This seems to be a small problem. I did not expect that it was exactly the small problem of the Internet, which laid a huge hidden danger for the spread of the disease later.
What happened? It turned out that almost at the time when Dr. Humar Khan was involved in the outbreak, the “Macona Triangle” belonged to a village in Sierra Leone, and a traditionally respected local witch doctor died of the virus.
No experts at the time knew that the Ebola virus had spread to that area, and no one had isolated the body. Not only that, The village also organized a large public funeral, and many people went there.
Soon, the witch doctor’s husband, mother, and grandson were all infected and died, and many people who attended her funeral were infected.
A few days later, an expert reported the cases of Guinea and Sierra Leone in an email, mentioning that the traditional witch doctor had died of the virus.
However, because of network problems, Humar Khan’s team did not see the email.
On March 31, one week after the World Health Organization announced the Ebola outbreak, the number of reported cases jumped from 49 to 112 in a country in Guinea, of which 70 died, and the death rate remained high. 60%. At that time, the Ebola virus had spread from Guinea and spread in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
If Humar Khan ’s team saw the e-mail, if they did n’t miss that important information, if they could really persuade the locals to isolate and protect in time, maybe the epidemic would not be as it was later. However, history does not allow “if”.
Also, at that time, the Ebola virus that originally infected the little boy had mutated into several different Ebola viruses.
For example, the virus transmitted at the funeral of the witch doctor is a mutant Ebola virus, officially called “Zaire Ebola virus A82V Marcona variant”.
△ In the first few months of the epidemic, a local list of the dead
A month later, in early May 2014, the epidemic seemed to have subsided.
The health department reports that the number of new cases is falling sharply. In Liberia, the Ebola virus appears to have disappeared. By the third week of May, the epidemic seemed to have basically ended.
The World Health Organization is preparing to announce the end of the epidemic, and international relief organizations have begun to close treatment units and prepare to return medical staff to their home countries. At that time, there were only 258 confirmed and suspected Ebola cases.
04, the end, just the beginning of another explosion
But, just when everyone felt relaxed, when the American experts were already sitting on the plane returning to the United States, the “Macona Triangle” began to have a large number of suspected cases, and some pregnant women had bleeding during delivery. More than that, the symptoms are very close to Ebola infections.
Doctors quickly confirmed: Ebola virus indeed. It’s back again.
At the end of May, Humar Khan held an emergency meeting. He told the team members that we are the only medical unit in the country that can treat Ebola patients, and we need as many blood samples from patients as possible.
They have a plan to take blood samples from people who are diagnosed with the infection, analyze the genome of the Ebola virus, and try to find a solution to the virus.
△ Dr. Humar Khan (first from left) and his team took a group photo outside the hospital
On May 26, Humar Khan’s team found nine infected women in a village and took them to the quarantine area.
However, while they were arguing fiercely with the patient’s family about whether they should be quarantined, young people in the village violently attacked the paramedics, leading them to run to the nearby police station to evade.
When the situation subsided, medical staff discovered that all nine infected women had disappeared from the clinic, and the locals secretly took them home from the quarantine area using motorcycles.
Medical staff can only bite the bullet and look for those people again, but many villagers are reluctant to talk to them and try to hide those patients.
At that time, Dr. Humar Khan was leading medical staff in a tent in the quarantine area.
His staff is scarce. Locally trained nurses are scarce. Some are infected. The rest are scared by the terrible Ebola virus.
As mentioned before, people who suffer from illness often “jet vomit,” and vomiting is everywhere, and the nurse has to clean it constantly. The patient continued to pull out a black, water-like liquid. The nurse could only dig a large hole in the bedboard and put a bucket under it. The patient was lying on the bed and pulled the excrement directly inside.
In this environment, as long as a drop of dirty liquid gets on the nurse’s eyes or respiratory tract, they will become infected.
Because the patients are constantly vomiting and diarrhea, they start to dehydrate. The nurses need to replenish the patients. If the water is not enough, they use fresh coconut juice instead. water.
△ The nurse is treating the patient
Nurses risked their lives and earned only $ 5 a day. So Humar Khan contacted the district medical officer,Together, the two made a request that the Ministry of Health should provide more funding to nurses who block Ebola.
Government officials finally agreed to give each nurse working in the Ebola quarantine an additional $ 3.5 per day “dangerous allowance” . But the money never appeared. Hummar Khan was worried whether the money was just an verbal promise, or who was corrupted.
At the same time, Humar Khan is actively contacting international colleagues for foreign medical support. But at that time, few doctors in the world knew how to treat patients with infectious diseases with major bleeding and severe vomiting, and the international community paid insufficient attention to the epidemic.
At that time, an American expert who was in close contact with Humar Khan warned the US government that the disease might spread, but the US government did not take it seriously.
△ Go to support local foreign experts
At that time, it happened to catch up with the World Cup. The American expert later recalled: “I was holding a seminar on the Ebola outbreak in the United States, and I couldn’t help but notice that when I was speaking, people were on mobile Check the score of the game on the Internet. “
He sighed and said, “Perhaps my speaking ability is really bad.” It wasn’t until the Ebola virus spread to a Dallas hospital in the United States that US officials began to take the matter seriously.
△ Medical staff and soldiers working in Sierra Leone affected areas
05, “This battle is now our battle”
Humal Khan said on a phone call to a friend: “I am here and feel lonely. We need more resources. We don’t get the help we need. We need more foreign assistance and more Many doctors come here to work. “
In this case, a man who was a nursing assistant in the maternity ward was also tested positive for Ebola virus and later died in the Ebola ward. Before that, an ambulance driver had died from an infection.
The nurses in the quarantine area also started to fall, and even the American experts who came to support were infected with the virus.
Everyone knows that anyone in an isolated area hospital can be infected at any time and die at any time. A large number of medical personnel began to flee the quarantine area, fled the hospital, and abandoned patients.
△ Medical staff are treating patient cadaver
Every heart is broken, everything is broken. At a critical moment, Hummar Khan delivered a touching speech to the only remaining medical staff. He said to everyone in Sierra Leone’s accent:
“This is a very difficult battle. Extraordinary things are happening and we have extraordinary things to do. The nursing staff left the hospital, but the general ward is still full of patients. Since most health workers have already Fleeing the hospital, we should be ready for work.
If you work 8 hours a day, get ready to work longer. Government ministers, nowMust be watching us closely.
We must continue to fight the Ebola virus, rather than leave the post like the average staff member. Other parts of the hospital may fall, but our team must stand firm.
If you say you don’t do this work, who will do it? This is what we have to do, and this battle is now our battle. We are working for our country, and we must do our best to make national sacrifices. “
In spite of his rhetoric, when Humar Khan spoke, he was not passionate. His voice was very low and heavy.
When he said the word “national sacrifices”, everyone in the room was crying. Everyone understands what he means. They all belong to the government of Sierra Leone, and some are still staff of the Ministry of Health. If any of them die, it is “national sacrifice.”
They looked around the room and were surprised to find that their team was so small—all people could fit in one room.
The person in this room is the only person in this country who has been trained in Ebola virus treatment, and the only hope for this country to stop the epidemic.
They all know they will die, but they don’t know when they will die. They choose to stick with it.
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△ At the time, some of the nurses in the photo did not persist in the victory against the epidemic
06, a “fighting battle” with unknown results
At that time, in June and July of 2014, the battle between medical staff and the virus reached the “fighting stage”-no one on either side was willing to show weakness, and both sides should be killed as soon as possible.
Humar KhanLed a group of “death squads” of nurses, insisting on treating patients in tents in the isolation zone.
Outside the tent, Humaar Khan ’s deputy, Michael, still runs the risk of being misunderstood and violently attacked, looking for patients who have fled, and seeking isolation as soon as possible. When they find the dead body, they also try to persuade local people to implement effective defense measures.
At the same time, genomic scientists at Tulane University, Harvard University, and MIT are working closely with Humar Khan.
Together, they collected blood samples from Ebola patients and suspected patients and shipped them to Harvard University for genome sequencing research to observe how the virus changes during human-to-human transmission. By June 15, 12 complete Ebola virus genomes had been extracted.
Another American expert collected $ 60,000 worth of protective equipment and medical supplies at the Tulane Health Science Center in New Orleans. She shipped all these materials to Africa, and she followed suit to help.
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△ Local doctors at rest (left) and local police who detect passersby (right)
Their opponent, the Ebola virus, is not weak.
On June 16, 28 new Ebola cases were found on the outer edge of the “Macona Triangle” in a town called Daru, of which 20 were found in a community clinic There, it was already full of Ebola virus. Eight other people were found in the town’s home, and some were dead.
By July 2, the first disease in Guinea had reported 413 cases, of which 303 died, with a mortality rate of 73%. There were 239 cases and 99 deaths in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
Also, the virus has begun to spread in another neighboring country, Liberia, where it has alreadyThere are now 107 cases with 65 deaths, and the mortality rate has reached 60%.
Ebola virus violently attacked Liberia’s capital Monrovia. All hospitals were crowded with Ebola-infected people. People were panicked. The entire city’s medical system was almost gone and completely paralyzed status.
The worst part is that the Ebola virus has started to move eastward, infecting more people and spreading to more countries. If you don’t control it, you will lose control. Once out of control, Ebola will not only be a plague on Africa, but a disaster worldwide.
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△ The spread of Ebola virus in Africa
07, the last battle, the last persistence
Humal Khan’s team insisted on gritting their teeth. In early July, a total of 70 to 90 infected people were treated in several wards controlled by Humar Khan, and the number is still rising steadily.
The staff felt that they were surrounded by the virus, too much work, unable to sleep, exhausted, faced with the danger of infection every day, attacked by the locals every day, and carried dead people every day.
But in the war against viruses, they have made a choice to fight to death.
At that time, two experimental Ebola vaccines had been developed in the United States and Canada, but their effects were not stable, and neither vaccine had been tested on humans. In addition, about 12 highly experimental drugs are also at various stages of development, but have not yet been tested in humans.
Also, a biochemical company in the United States has tried to cultivate Ebola antibodies in genetically modified tobacco to fight Ebola virus; they found that this antibody can cure some/ 1 / q / 85 “data-w =” 413 “data-h =” 500 “>
△ A colleague of Humar Khan, another doctor who was killed by Ebola virus
Among the dead doctors, there is a name we are not familiar with. His name is Humar Khan, and he is the “African version of Zhong Nanshan.”
However, he failed to see the virus defeated, to see the victory of himself and his colleagues, and the sincere gratitude of people and the honor of himself, like our academician Zhong Nanshan.
After learning that Dr. Humar Khan died, Harvard University expert Pattis Sabeti has been working alongside him (Pardis Sabeti) Crying. The American expert said to his colleagues:
“In the fight against infectious diseases, we always see death. We want to know why it happened, and we are all struggling to understand our place in the universe and why we are here. Huma Khan ’s death makes me feel that we must do more. People like him will not die in vain.
10
This is the story of Dr. Humar Khan of “Africa Zhongnanshan”.
In the course of fighting the Ebola virus, there are still many people, like the Dr. Humar Khan who is talking about today, knowing that one of his feet has stepped into the gate of the ghost, knowing that he has lived Today may not live tomorrow, but they still choose to stand between the virus and us, to protect us from the invasion of the disease and protect us until they give their lives.
We don’t know their names, but they are all heroes.
In the past six years after the Ebola outbreak in Africa, “new coronaviruses” have emerged in China. Just now, there are many Chinese medical staff like Dr. Humar Khan in Wuhan, Hubei, and across the country, blocking the spread of the virus, risking their lives, and building a solid line of security for us.
We don’t know their names, but they are all heroes.
In the medical world, there are still many experts such as Dr. Humar Khan and Academician Zhong Nanshan. Facing the epidemic, they face challenges and use what they have learned in life to study new viruses and develop new drugs. Give us ordinary people a scientific light that illuminates the darkness.
We don’t know their names, but they are all heroes.
At the end of the book Crisis in the Affected Areas, the author wrote this passage:
“Those fighters standing at the door of virology understand that they face a long struggle with terrible enemies. Maybe their weapons will not work, or they themselves will be devoured by the sick, but they will stand There, with great hope and courage, stood there. It is precisely this quality that allows us human beings to have an advantage that some viruses do not have before the disease. This advantage is our self-awareness , Teamwork, and willingness to sacrifice for others. “
I want to dedicate this passage, as well as this article, to those who struggle with disease and disaster:
To pay tribute to the medical warriors who are fighting the new coronavirus!
To salute the unknown heroes who guard our health and safety!
We firmly believe that these heroes will defeat the virus and achieve the ultimate victory—the hero will win! Wuhan wins! China will win!
This article comes from public micro-channel number: read far oceans (ID: readabroad) , author: ReadAbroad