The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is About the Marburg and Ebola Filoviruses Breakout

The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a true story about a set of events from 1980 through 1993. The events involved the breakout of Marburg and Ebola filoviruses and how the scientists involved dealt with the threat.

The book starts in 1980 when Charles Monet is living around Mt. Elgon. He is a loner and a womanizer and spends most of his time traveling around that area when he isn't working. He works at the pump house at the sugar factory within near the base of Mt. Elgon. On one trip he goes to Kitum Cave with a female friend. It is in the cave on new-years day, 1980, that he contracted Marburg. By January 8^th he has a severe headache, the first symptoms. Three days later he starts vomiting, his eyes become red, his face starts to droop, his skin begins turning a yellowish color, and he develops little red star-shaped specs all over his body. One of his co-workers stops by to check on him since he hasn't shown up for work and takes him to a hospital in Kisumu by lake Victoria. The doctors at Kisumu decide that he should go to Nairobi Hospital in East Africa so he boards an aircraft and ends up bleeding and puking blood and black stuff the whole way there. The red starlike shapes have turned into purple bruises and the skin on his face is starting to droop more as it separates from his face. When the aircraft arrives he stumbles off and gets in a taxi headed for the Nairobi hospital. After he arrives he is left in the waiting room and this is when he "crashes", or "bleeds out". He loses consciousness, vomits blood all over the floor, his bowels release and parts of his intestines flood out in a mess of blood and black particles. Dr. Shem Musoke was the doctor that treated Charles Monet. He is also the Doctor from whom the scientists later get the tissue samples of the disease. The samples of Dr. Musoke were sent to the C.D.C. in the US and to the National Institute of Virology in South Africa.