[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 108 (Thursday, June 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9475-S9476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                                 EBOLA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the Americans who has a great 
deal of firsthand knowledge of Zaire, the troubled country in Africa, 
is Dr. William Close, a physician who spent a number of years in Zaire.
  He is a remarkable person whose 16 years were not only given to 
service of the people of Zaire but given to keen observation.
  Dr. Close, whose instincts and insights I have come to trust, 
believes that the United States should be backing Prime Minister Kengo 
more firmly. It is the peaceful way out for a nation that is now 
destitute. It is a way out from Mobuto dictatorship.
  He has written a novel about the disease that we have heard so much 
about, ebola. That is also the title of his book. I have not read the 
book, but I understand it provides real insights into Africa.
  I have read the epilog to the book, which is not fiction. The book is 
fiction but based in large part on facts. The epilog contains insights, 
not only into Zaire but into international tragedies, as well as 
domestic tragedies.
  For example, when Dr. Close writes: ``Devastating diseases breed in 
the cesspools of poverty,'' he could be writing about other countries, 
but he could also be writing about our country.
  He prods our consciences when he writes:

       When the people of one nation are crushed by destitution, 
     disaster from revolutions or plagues are inevitable. Then, 
     countries such as ours, which with small amounts of timely 
     assistance could have prevented the worst from happening, are 
     forced into more massive involvement. Recent history proves 
     the point.

  I ask that Dr. Close's epilog to his book, ``Ebola,'' be printed in 
the Record.
  The epilog follows:

                                 Epilog

       After the first explosion of Zaire's Ebola virus in 1976, 
     the country continued on its inexorable decline into economic 
     collapse and political chaos. A different strain of Ebola 
     erupted in south Sudan three years later. As before, it came 
     . . . it killed . . . it disappeared.
       Ten years after the tragedies in Yambuku, I had settled 
     into a remote rural medical practice in Wyoming. One morning 
     I opened the newspaper and read that the United States Army 
     intended to build an aerosol lab at Dugway Proving Ground 
     near Salt Lake City to test hemorrhagic fever viruses, 
     including Ebola, for ``defensive purposes.'' With Salt Lake 
     City only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from my Wyoming home, 
     I felt a tightening in my gut: there would be no defense 
     against a laboratory accident. An outcry from the people of 
     Utah delayed the project--for the time being.
       Four years ago, Zaire was again on the front pages. Like a 
     coup de grace, a violent mutiny gripped the country by its 
     throat. The troops, backed by a desperate, hungry population, 
     rampaged through the major cities and destroyed what little 
     remained of industry, commerce, and the rotting 
     infrastructure.
       In August of 1994, I returned to Zaire at the invitation of 
     the Prime Minister of the transitional government, Mr. Kengo 
     wa Dondo, an old friend. With Zairian and Belgian
      colleagues, we reviewed the medical crises that continue to 
     overwhelm the country. Sleeping sickness, river blindness, 
     goiters and cretinism, and malaria had been under 
     effective 

[[Page S 9476]]
     control during the decades before independence and into the sixties and 
     early seventies. But, with the disintegration of Zaire's 
     economy, exacerbated by gross corruption and 
     mismanagement, by the early 1990s these diseases were 
     again ravaging large segments of the population and AIDS 
     played out its slow-death scenario in every city. I 
     visited the capital city's general hospital, called ``Mama 
     Yemo'' after the president's mother. Her bronze bust still 
     stands among fetid, skeletal buildings of what had been a 
     proud and efficient referral center of two thousand beds. 
     Old midwives walk four hours to come to work. Doctors 
     thumb rides to be on call. The personnel is there, trained 
     and ready to work, but there is no equipment, no 
     medicines, no IV fluids worth mentioning. The medical 
     staff come, still hoping that they can do something for 
     people.
       Prime Minister Kengo's government has started up the long 
     and dangerous road to reforming the national economy. This 
     means eliminating powerful and wealthy forces that have 
     profited from the virtual collapse of government. This means 
     countering political egos and stepping on sensitive toes. 
     Communications, schools, medical services, and normal 
     government functions like tax collecting and customs at the 
     ports of entry must be rebuilt from scratch. For this to 
     happen, roads, telephones, postal services, water supply, and 
     sewer systems must function properly. The disintegration of 
     these combined services signifies an infrastructure that has 
     plummeted to catastrophic levels. In such conditions, it is 
     not surprising that major epidemics are flourishing, and 
     devastating diseases like hepatitis, AIDS, ``red diarrhea,'' 
     and now, once more, Ebola, are threatening the population 
     and, possibly, the world.
       In 1976, Zaire was still a client state of the West, and 
     although President Mobutu's long, all-powerful dictatorship 
     had stifled progress and milked profits for himself and his 
     entourage to the detriment of his people, some services were 
     still working, especially the mission hospitals and schools. 
     Today this situation is far worse. Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi 
     are examples of countries whose strategic value to the West 
     all but disappeared when the Berlin Wall came down. ``Africa 
     has fallen off the horizon.'' ``We will help you, Mr. Kengo, 
     when you have straightened out the country.'' Catch-22 
     nonsense dressed in meaningless, diplomatic jargon and 
     papered with documents that begin, ``We deplore . . .'' It 
     takes a corrupter to exploit the leader of a client state.
       The present resurgence of Ebola in Zaire, the deaths in 
     Kikwit of patients along with their Zairian doctors, nurses, 
     hospital workers, and Italian nursing sisters, can either 
     generate fear and more panic-provoking films, or it can give 
     rise to an awakening in all of us. We live in a small 
     community of nations. When one nation coughs, others cannot 
     sleep. When the people of one nation are crushed by 
     destitution, disaster from revolutions or plagues are 
     inevitable. Then, countries such as ours, which with small 
     amounts of timely assistance could have prevented the worst 
     from happening, are forced into more massive involvement. 
     Recent history proves the point.
       Devastating diseases breed in the cesspools of poverty. 
     Many Zairian doctors and nurses are well-trained, competent 
     professionals, but they have little or nothing with which to 
     work. Maintenance and even the most basic supplies are 
     lacking in government hospitals because of the gross 
     mismanagement characteristic of regimes that preceded Mr. 
     Kengo's government. We must graduate from judgment and 
     neglect to realistic actions, and we must encourage the 
     handful of men and women now struggling against monumental 
     odds in countries all but abandoned by the West.
       I am sad that the occasion for the publishing of my book 
     ``Ebola'' coincides with another outbreak of this African 
     hemorrhagic fever in Zaire. My heart joins the many who 
     mourn. I bow to the courage of those who take care of the 
     sick and dying. Whether this resurgence is caused by our 
     trifling with nature's balance or by some other tragic 
     circumstance, let us hope that Ebola's hiding place will be 
     found this time.
       If this book opens hearts, stimulates minds, and broadens 
     our human perspectives, it will have played a small part in 
     surmounting an immense challenge.
                                                           W.T.C.,
                                               Big Piney, Wyoming.
     

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