In the hospital during the outbreak

Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch, M.D. (St. Martin’s Press, $27.99).

Steven Hatch, a doctor and professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, had already in Liberia in 2013, but when the Ebola outbreak began a little over a year later, he felt the pull to return there and help out. After some bureaucratic delays, he did; this book is his report, and it is far less alarmist and far more compassionate than most news reports of the crisis were at the time.

In Inferno, Hatch tells the stories of some of his patients–both those who died and those who survived–but it’s also threaded throughout with a doctor’s perspective on the underlying conditions in the country that allowed the outbreak to become so dangerous. Both political difficulties and public health deficits combined to make Liberia more susceptible to epidemic conditions than some other nations in the region, and Hatch offers his perspective as a health care provider and as a scholar. He’s also very honest about his own struggles to cope under the stress of the situation, which makes for a nuanced and compelling first-person account.

In this memoir, a New England doctor tells of his experience working in Liberia during the height of the Ebola crisis and comments on the irresponsible Western media frenzy that exploded in response to the outbreak. While some parts are admittedly quite dry, others are riveting, disturbing and heartbreaking.