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Ross Donaldson was an idealistic young medical student who gave up his comfortable life in the States to venture into Sierra Leone, a country ravaged by fighting and plagued by conflict streaming across the border from neighboring Liberia. In a hospital ward with meager supplies, Ross is in a race against time to find a way to care for patients afflicted with Lassa fever, a deadly and highly contagious hemorrhagic illness similar to Ebola. Forced to confront his own fears, he stands alone to make life-and-death decisions in the face of a never-ending onslaught of the sick. Ultimately, he finds himself not only fighting for the lives of others but also for his own. The Lassa Ward is the memoir of a young man studying to be a physician, while making his way through a land where a battle against one of the world's deadliest diseases matches a struggle for human rights and decency.
"Effortlessly transmits both the facts and the fascination of a bad infectious outbreak...[a] portrait of contagion at the highest possible magnification."--The New York Times
“A touching and compelling account. The Lassa Ward brings to life the challenges and rewards that dedicated development workers face daily around the world.”--Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate in economics
"Required reading for all medical students and anyone looking for a little armchair medical adventure."--Library Journal
“Donaldson started out as an earnest, well-meaning American medical student, off on a great African adventure. He came of age in the middle of a raging epidemic, civil war, and hideous poverty, discovering a humanity few Americans ever experience. Donaldson has bared his soul, offering a lesson that should be required reading for every doctor-in-training.”--Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health"A potent mix of travel memoir, coming-of-age narrative and medical mystery. Donaldson's experiences treating a frighteningly infectious and often deadly hemorrhagic fever, the strength of his West African patients, and his own grave illness bring him to a contemplation of mortality, poverty, civil war, and medicine as it is practiced in the first and third worlds. " - Jo Perry, BookBrowse.com
DR. ROSS I. DONALDSON is a UCLA medical professor who works in one of Los Angeles's main trauma centers, specializing in emergency medicine and global health. He is author of several medical texts and has been a humanitarian in some of the world’s most dangerous places. When in the States, he resides in Venice Beach, California.
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