Just an airplane ride away

In the late 1980's I was heavily involved with the Ambulance and Rescue Services in Northern Virginia and was a part time lecturer at the Georgetown School of Medicine. The recent outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa reminded me of a previous Ebola event that did (despite counter claims) spread to the U.S., although it did not directly impact any humans.

To explain ... one of the vectors for the distribution of the virus is the Green Monkey, a species that easily mimics human response and is often used for medical research. At that time thousands of monkeys were imported annually from Africa and one of the large importers of the beasts was located just outside Reston VA.. Shortly after a delivery of a monkey shipment some of the animals started to die of a hemorrhagic type disease that  looks suspiciously like an Ebola outbreak in (if I remember correctly) Zaire.

Needless to say there was an immediate and closely guarded medical emergency response that kept the media out of the information loop and caused the authorities to euthanize all the monkeys as the only possible solution to prevent the disease from occurring in the human population of the U.S. As a senior EMS officer I was told that there was a problem at the primate facility and that regional medical groups should be alert for several specific medical symptoms. If we found anyone displaying those symptoms we should isolate and inform. We were not told that there was a potential for an Ebola outbreak, but we were made very aware that it was serious medical emergency.

I didn't really get a good appreciation for Ebola as a disease until the mid 90's when I ran across a book by Richard Preston called "The Hot Zone", which described an Ebola event and discussed the Reston Ebola Scare. It was afterwards determined that the disease the monkeys had was a mutated version of Ebola that was not as infectious as the original strain, but it was still a potential danger to humans. In that instance we lucked out. I can only hope we will continue to be aware, responsive and safe from this mobile disease with a high mortality rate that is only a plane flight away from reaching our shores.

If you want to learn more about Ebola, as a disease, a good starting point would be read "The Hot Zone". I guarantee it is the most frightening book you will ever read.