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

by Richard Preston

In the months after its emergence in Meliandou, the disease kept spreading. In a village called Dandou, which is a fifteen-minute drive by motorbike from Meliandou, a man got sick. He was a relative of the midwife of Meliandou, the woman who’d died in the Guéckédou hospital after she’d taken care of Émile’s mother and grandmother. The man realized he was dying, and he asked his family to carry him into a patch of sacred forest. They placed him on the ground under the trees, where he died surrounded by his loved ones. Afterward, following local tradition, the man’s friends and family members took turns lying next to his body in the forest. They embraced the body, wept over it, and ate meals next to it during which they served foods that the man had liked. This was a way of remembering the man and cherishing their love for him. The disease attacked some of the mourners afterward.