- For Ebola patients that end up in Western hospitals, it is difficult to remain anonymous. As a story in the special issue of this week on the privacy of shows, the fears of the public health often trample the privacy concerns for disease outbreaks, and the curiosity of the media is relentless.
But an Ebola patient who grazed Fame held its anonymity. The only case of Ebola ever recorded in West Africa before the current outbreak, it is simply described in four scientific articles as a 34 year old woman who contracted the disease in 1994, while working as a researcher chimpanzees in the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast. She was evacuated to Switzerland for treatment.
The researcher has never spoken to the press, but agreed to discuss his thoughts with Science Insider about the importance of privacy and why, to date, it not want his name known to the public in relation to Ebola. "I do not want this to be my claim to fame," she said. "It looks bad."
The case of the woman has received the attention of major media. Not only the circumstances its dramatic infection and a little weird, but his case has also provided the first strong evidence that Ebola naturally infected chimps and suggested that the virus could be devastating both populations of chimpanzees and gorillas. Some stories also questioned the risk that its Swiss medical team by taking care of it.
the researcher, ethologist, worked in the forest study a chimpanzee community that his adviser Christophe Boesch of the University of Basel in Switzerland, had followed since 1976. Although chimpanzees were "accustomed" to humans, the researchers made a point to stay at least 3 meters. They knew the stories and habits individuals, and when a 4 year old female lost her mother and became lethargic, the team took notice. "It was the only time I broke into tears when I was in the forest", says ethologist, who thought that the chimpanzee was depressed. "It was not clear to me she was sick."
Two days later, the researchers found the corpse of chimpanzee and carted back to their field station to conduct a necropsy.
woman was one of three people who dissected the chimp, 16 November 1994. She was wearing gloves "households", while the other two had latex gloves. Nobody donned masks or gowns, and it never crossed their minds that the animal could have died of Ebola. "We were more worried that we presented a disease in the chimpanzee community," she said
Eight days later, she developed a fever and began to lose his appetite. Colleague has finished his dinner. she suspects that she had malaria, but antimalarial drugs did nothing. after 3 days have passed, she was taken to a distance of 0 kilometers hospital in Abidjan, where a friend stayed . in her room to keep her company her condition continued to deteriorate with the classic symptoms of Ebola kicks in. diarrhea, vomiting, rash, and confusion But she was not bleeding , who was the telltale sign of the disease.
Nobody at the hospital suggested tests for Ebola. "no one suspected," she said. "They thought immediately that I had malaria. At one point my temperature dropped and they said, 'You see, we told you.' "
Her boyfriend called from Europe and asked if he was flying over. "I said," It would be nice to see again, "she recalls.
Instead, a jet of Swiss air ambulance transported her to Basel, where she received treatment in an isolation room with negative pressure to the University Hospital Basel. Her caregivers were wearing gowns, gloves and masks, but not the type of personal protective equipment now used in Ebola treatment units. Fifteen days after she fell ill, the hospital discharged him, and a month later, she returned to Ivory Coast to continue his research. "I felt like I had abandoned my colleagues and I returned as soon as possible," she said.
She did not learn what had caused his illness until February of 1995 and was detected by chance. In the fall she fell ill, eight of the 43 chimpanzees had followed his team is dead and four others missing. Boesch sought help virologists in France to study blood from three live chimpanzees (they tranquilized them with darts), as well as animal tissues, it autopsied and another who had died. The laboratory also analyzed the blood of the researchers who conducted the necropsy, which led to the isolation of its sample of Ebola virus. "I did not know about Ebola," she said. "I realized by reading a few items we could have really been the source of something big."
Following its late diagnosis, 74 people, she had been in contact with during his disease received Ebola antibody tests. None, including two workers she has done with the autopsy, had a positive outcome. "Imagine if I was contagious," she said. "no, not imagine. "
Although she was in a remote location with no phone, reporters soon began contacting it." a person lab disclosed my name, "she said. "I am the strange letters in the forest of Tai." Media inquiries intensified as May when a large Ebola outbreak surfaced in Kikwit, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and European journalists covering wanted to make a stop in Ivory Coast to meet with her. "I thought it was ridiculous that people want to come and interrogate me on the way home from Congo," she said. A German TV station even offered to fly her to record a program. "I kind of disgusted by it all."
Although some journalists knew her name, she is grateful that none ever made public more than ever given the mini-celebrity status heaped on Kent Brantly Nina Pham, Craig Spencer, Thomas Duncan, Nancy Writebol William Pooley, and others during the recent outbreak in West Africa. "I find it shocking how the press put people there all on and you're practically in bed with them, "she said." I'm not sure what it does for you, but I suspect it's not very good. They are victims in one direction. "
aside from the personal toll it may have taken his name had been made public, stories like hers, she said, distort reality. "People are all this media attention because they have caught a virus," she said. "I'm sick for 2 weeks, and I'm really bad, but there are so many people who suffer much and we do not think to write about them."
More privacy and take a quiz on your own IQ privacy, see "the end of privacy" special section in this week's issue of science
* Ebola files :. Given the current Ebola outbreak unprecedented in terms of the number of people killed and the rapid geographic spread, science and Science Translational Medicine did a research collection and articles on viral disease available for researchers and the general public.
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