Explaining Emerging Infectious Diseases

“2015 was a very busy year for emerging infectious diseases.” – Steven Hatfill, MD
Dr. Steven Hatfill Dr. Steven Hatfill Photo: Wikipedia
Dedicating his lecture to Médecins Sans Frontières, for their heroic actions in West Africa, Dr. Steven Hatfill spoke to a captivated audience at the 33rd Annual Conference of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in California about the 43 newly emerging infectious diseases that jumped to a larger geographic area from their wild animal hosts to human populations in the past 30 years. Continue reading

The Story of Ebola in Reston, Virginia

Ebola Reston
In October 1989 the community of Reston, Virginia went about their daily lives not realizing that a serious crisis was developing right in their back yards that would not be entirely resolved until March 1990. It was a serious calamity that could have wiped out the entire population. This dire emergency was described twenty years ago by Richard Preston in his non-fiction book, “The Hot Zone.” The “hot zone” refers to an “area that contains lethal, infectious organisms” also dubbed “hot agent,” an “extremely lethal virus, potentially airborne.” (Richard Preston, The Hot Zone, Random House, New York, 1994, p. 296) Continue reading