DEVELOPMENT REPORT - A Doctor Who Left His Mark on a World That Lives in

Fear of Ebola

Broadcast date: 2-23-2009 / Written by Jerilyn Watson

From http://www.unsv.com/voanews/specialenglish/

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have declared the end of an outbreak of Ebola
virus. Cases were first identified in December in the southern province of Kasai Occidental. The World
Health Organization says officials reported a total of thirty-two cases, including fifteen deaths.

The worst form of the disease kills nine out of ten victims. Ebola is a
hemorrhagic fever. It causes unstoppable bleeding. It spreads
through contact with blood and other bodily fluids. There are no
cures, but researchers continue to learn more about how the feared
virus works.

It was named for the Ebola River in the former Zaire, now the
Democratic Republic of Congo. A doctor in Zaire, Ngoy Mushola,
documented the first outbreak in nineteen seventy- six. Hundreds of
people were infected, and most died. A doctor and nurse treat a patient with
Ebola in Congo's Kasai Occidental
province in September 2007, during an
The epidemic might have been even worse had it not been for the earlier outbreak

father of the actress Glenn Close.

Doctor William Close, an American, worked in Zaire for sixteen years. For a time he was one of only
three doctors, and the only surgeon, at a huge hospital in Kinshasa. Later he was the administrator.
He was also chief doctor of Zaire's army and personal physician to President Mobutu Sese Seko.

One night, Doctor Close was on a plane, returning from a visit to the
United States. He heard two other passengers talking about the
epidemic. The United States Centers for Disease Control had sent
them to help.

One was a virus expert. Karl Johnson had identified and

photographed the Ebola virus just days earlier. The other was Joel
Breman, another C.D.C. expert. Doctor Close spent the flight talking
with them.

Then, in Zaire, he quickly used his connections and influence with the Doctor William Close

government. Doctor Breman remembers how William Close's planning and administration helped the
medical team end the epidemic. He organized supply flights, for example, to affected areas.

To contain the spread of the virus, people were restricted to villages. Medical workers were given
protective clothing. Equipment was carefully disinfected.

After his work in Africa, William Close returned to the United States. He became a country doctor, as
he had always wanted. He was still working in Big Piney, Wyoming, when he died of a heart attack
on January fifteenth. He was eighty-four years old. Joel Breman says, "Doctor Close left his mark on
the world."

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.