Ebola, Laurie Garrett
Ebola, Laurie Garrett
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Ebola
Story of an Outbreak

Author: Laurie Garrett

Narrator: Kristin Kalbli

Unabridged: 4 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/02/2014


Synopsis

Where does Ebola originate? How does it spread? And what should governments do to stop it? Few people understand the answers to these questions better than Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett.

In this masterful account of the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Zaire, Garrett, now the Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, shows how superstition and fear, compounded by a lack of resources, education, and clearheaded government planning have plagued our response to Ebola. In an extensive new introduction, Garrett forcefully argues that learning from past outbreaks is the key to solving the Ebola crisis of 2014.

In her account of the 1995 Zaire outbreak, first published in her bestselling book Betrayal of Trust, Garrett takes readers through the epidemic's course-beginning with the Kikwit villager who first contracted it from an animal encounter while chopping wood for charcoal deep in the forest. As she documents the outbreak in riveting detail, Garrett shows why our trust in world governments to protect people's health has been irrevocably broken. She details the international community's engagement in the epidemic's aftermath: a pattern of response and abandonment, urgency that devolves into amnesia.

Ebola: Story of an Outbreak is essential reading for anyone who wants to comprehend Ebola, one of mankind's most mysterious, malicious scourges. Garrett has issued a powerful call for governments, citizens, and the disease-fighting agencies of the wealthy world to take action.

About Laurie Garrett

Laurie Garrett has received the Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, George C. Polk (twice), and four Overseas Press Club Awards for her work as a journalist and author. Books by Garrett include the bestsellers The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. Garrett grew up in Los Angeles, graduated with honors from the University of California in Santa Cruz, and was named Alum of the Year in 1995, and one of the Forty Greatest Alums in 2010. She did graduate work in immunology, research at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, and was a postgraduate Fellow in the Harvard School of Public Health. She began her journalism career at KPFA radio in Berkeley, followed by freelancing work in sub-Saharan Africa. In the 1980s she was a science correspondent for National Public Radio, and during the 1990s she worked both as a science and foreign reporter for Newsday in New York.

Since 2004 Garrett has been Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. She lives in Brooklyn, and is an avid urban cyclist.


Reviews

What separates healthcare writers like Laurie Garrett, Paul Farmer (Partners In Health), and Ben Goldacre is their emphasis on the social context and conditions to healthcare. The biochemistry of disease and treatment is one aspect, but the power structures that prevent accessibility to healthcare i......more

Goodreads review by CYIReadBooks on November 17, 2020

Historical account of the Ebola outbreak. Somewhat politicized IMO.......more

Goodreads review by Domingo on June 09, 2021

Ebola A story of an outbreak by Laurie Garret. I like how Mrs. Garret makes a clear account of the roles played by: Corruption, deforestation, lack of health infrastructure, low health expenditure, ignorance, superstition, and starvation in the development of highly infectious diseases. She also deno......more

Goodreads review by Tiffany on September 01, 2023

I’m a huge fan of Laurie Garrett’s books but this one wasn’t my favorite. This book, while interesting was not really about Ebola but was mostly about the breakdown in public health infrastructure during the 1995 Zaire outbreak. A lot of the problems during this outbreak were mirrored during the rec......more

Goodreads review by Ann on December 06, 2021

What a fascinating read! It’s so interesting how much press COVID gets yet we heard so little about the Ebola outbreak of 1995 in mainstream media. The Congolese unrest and Mobutu are also devastating parts of African history that I never recall learning about in school. This book was truly eye open......more