Lassa Fever! Part 2

By Rich Schaffer (SIMAIR pilot)

 

Simroots Volume 42 #2 carried the first part of Chapter 34 of SIM pilot Rich Schaffer’s memoir, Just One SIMAIR Story. Schaffer relied heavily on summarized information in John G. Fuller’s book FEVER! The Hunt for a New Killer Virus (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1974) for the first part of his chapter before writing about his own involvement in the Lassa fever story. This mysterious fever involved fluctuating temperatures, blood anomalies, rash, and hemorrhaging that struck and killed SUM nurse Laura Wine and SIM nurse Charlotte Shaw in Bingham Hospital, Jos, Nigeria, in January and February, 1969. About a week after Char’s death, Penny Pinneo [an SIM nurse who had attended Charlotte Shaw at Bingham Hospital] was having a hard time sleeping, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and not quite sure why. It was three in the morning when Dr. Jeanette Troup [SIM doctor] knocked on her door to ask her to assist her in the obstetrics ward. One of the Nigerian nurses on staff went into a difficult labor that would require a Caesarean section to successfully deliver the baby.

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