Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come

by Richard Preston

There were fifteen Ebola patients in the cubicles along the narrow corridor. Fletcher could see that the nurses were under pressure. “They were a pretty frightened, tired group,” he recalled later. Khan told Fletcher that some of the Ebola nurses had been skipping work. They were afraid of catching the virus, and their family members had been pressuring them to stay home so they wouldn’t infect their families. Patients were prostrate, and they were vomiting and having diarrhea. The nurses were giving them fluids to drink, but the patients vomited them up, which caused the patients to become severely dehydrated. As this happens, the level of potassium in the bloodstream decreases drastically. An imbalance of potassium in the blood can trigger a heart attack.