Medicine Grand Rounds, William Fischer and David Wohl, “Ebola and Lassa Fever: New Concepts of Epidemiology and Therapy”

Severe acute viral infections are one of the world’s most common causes of hospitalization and mortality with worse outcomes disproportionately affecting resource-constrained countries. In the past 15 years we have witnessed the emergence or re-emergence of several viral pathogens that threaten global public health including SARS, pandemic H1N1 Influenza, MERS-CoV, and most recently Ebola.

Fischer, assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, was among the first physicians on the ground in Guinea, West Africa, caring for patients during that country’s Ebola outbreak. He later teamed up with David Wohl, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, in Liberia. In collaboration with health care providers from Liberia and a clinical research organization called Clinical RM, they launched the first clinical trial of a therapeutic intervention in an Ebola outbreak, in which plasma from survivors of Ebola virus disease is given to patients who are battling the disease.

“Our model has always been to couple direct service with clinical research, with the idea being that if our freezers went down and we lost all of our research samples we were still providing an incredibly important service to patients” said Fischer.