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Article: Ebola Outbreak Profoundly Changes Life in Zairian City
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- May 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Civil servants, market stall owners and farmers in outlying
suburbs are all convinced medical missionary Dan Fountain is
responsible for the Ebola virus outbreak that has taken 101 lives and
seems likely to claim many more.
Fountain seems an odd person to blame for the incurable scourge
that causes bleeding of the eyes, ears and skin and kills 90 percent
of its victims. He is an American Baptist medical missionary who
worked for decades in Vanga, about 50 miles from here, and wrote the
basic public health texts for Zaire.
But Kikwit residents insist that Fountain is also a witch doctor,
a rare calling, they concede, for a non-African. They say he
sometimes transforms himself into a baleful ...