In 2014, Steven Hatch, MD, associate professor of medicine, flew into a Liberian airport in the middle of the world’s largest Ebola outbreak to help treat patients on the frontlines. The virus claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people across West Africa. Now, there’s a new outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the latest episode of Voices of UMassMed, Dr. Hatch describes the complexities of treating the deadly virus.
“As scared as people were in the United States of watching people walk around in space suits, these people were watching people walk up to them in spacesuits,” said Hatch, of the protective gear that doctors wore to keep from contracting the virus. “That induced terrible fear but also depression that they were going to come to the end of their lives, and in the case of half of the patients, that was correct.”
Listen to the full podcast at https://www.umassmed.edu/news/voices. Listen and subscribe to the podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes by searching Voices of UMassMed. To share feedback and ideas for future episodes, e-mail the Office of Communications at UMassChanCommunications@umassmed.edu.
