22 January, 2015

The First High Profile Ebola Case

“I Don’t Know if I’m Already Infected.” The Controversial Death of Ebola’s Unsung Hero — Matter — Medium: Doctors Without Borders also denied that it played any role in the “management” of the plan to evacuate Khan, or the final decision to abort the flight. This contradicted what C. Ray Khan had been told by the minister of health. “Things aren’t adding up,” he said in a phone conversation from Mahera. “Somebody isn’t telling us the truth.” Khan’s brother Alhajie remains angry that an African was denied treatment with the experimental drug while two white Americans became the first to be given ZMapp, and distrusts Doctors Without Borders’s account of what happened. The decision, he says, “looks political.” One medical professional who was involved in the conference calls told me that Doctors Without Borders “was being very paternalistic,” entirely cutting Khan out of the decision-making process. “It’s not that they didn’t want to do what was best for Khan,” the medical professional says, but the organization allowed the perception to take root that “it was about color.”