
The Lassa Ward
One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest Diseases
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Eric Michael Summerer
About this listen
Ross Donaldson is one of just a few who have ventured into dark territory of a country ravaged by war to study one of the world's most deadly diseases. As an untried medical student studying the intersection of global health and communicable disease, Donaldson soon found himself in dangerous Sierra Leone, on the border of war-struck Liberia, where he struggled to control the spread of Lassa Fever. The words, "you know Lassa can kill you, don't you?" haunted him each day. With the country in complete upheaval and working conditions suffering, he is forced to make life-and-death decisions alone as a never-ending onslaught of contagious patients flood the hospital. Soon however, he is not only fighting for others but himself when he becomes afflicted with a life threatening disease.
The Lassa Ward is more than just an adventure story about the making of a physician; it is a portrait of the Sierra Leone people and the human struggle of those risking their daily comforts and lives to aid them.
©2009 Ross I. Donaldson (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds
- Ebola and the Ravages of History
- By: Paul Farmer
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert, where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?
-
-
CRITICAL LISTENING for 2020!
- By Vin on 11-17-20
By: Paul Farmer
-
When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
-
-
Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
-
Between Two Kingdoms
- A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
- By: Suleika Jaouad
- Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival.
-
-
This was painful.
- By Meredith Nutrition on 07-31-22
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
When the Air Hits Your Brain
- Tales from Neurosurgery
- By: Frank T Vertosick Jr. MD
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick's patients and unsparing-yet-fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.
-
-
Finished in 1 and 1/2 days
- By Philos on 04-15-17
-
One Doctor
- Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
- By: Brendan Reilly
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An epic story told by a unique voice in American medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician. In riveting first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes us to the front lines of medicine today.
-
-
Simply Brilliant
- By Blue on 06-20-14
By: Brendan Reilly
-
The End of October
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At an internment camp in Indonesia, 47 people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons - microbiologist, epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city....
-
-
Powerful. prophetic, with the heros we need
- By tina on 04-30-20
By: Lawrence Wright
-
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds
- Ebola and the Ravages of History
- By: Paul Farmer
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert, where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?
-
-
CRITICAL LISTENING for 2020!
- By Vin on 11-17-20
By: Paul Farmer
-
When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
-
-
Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
-
Between Two Kingdoms
- A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
- By: Suleika Jaouad
- Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival.
-
-
This was painful.
- By Meredith Nutrition on 07-31-22
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
When the Air Hits Your Brain
- Tales from Neurosurgery
- By: Frank T Vertosick Jr. MD
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick's patients and unsparing-yet-fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.
-
-
Finished in 1 and 1/2 days
- By Philos on 04-15-17
-
One Doctor
- Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine
- By: Brendan Reilly
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An epic story told by a unique voice in American medicine, One Doctor describes life-changing experiences in the career of a distinguished physician. In riveting first-person prose, Dr. Brendan Reilly takes us to the front lines of medicine today.
-
-
Simply Brilliant
- By Blue on 06-20-14
By: Brendan Reilly
-
The End of October
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At an internment camp in Indonesia, 47 people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons - microbiologist, epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city....
-
-
Powerful. prophetic, with the heros we need
- By tina on 04-30-20
By: Lawrence Wright
-
A Sky Full of Stars
- Learning to Surrender to God's Perfect Plans
- By: Meg Apperson, Lisa Leonard - foreword
- Narrated by: Emily Ellet
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meg Apperson grew up having a relationship with Jesus, and she always trusted God. But it wasn't until her daughter Avery - a miracle in so many ways - was born with a litany of life-threatening birth defects that she began to fully understand what it means to trust Jesus with everything. In this heartbreakingly beautiful memoir, you'll learn how a mother fought for her child, her family, and even herself as she grappled with the weight of failure - of letting down everyone around her and feeling let down by God.
-
-
Honest and beautiful
- By Katie on 12-28-20
By: Meg Apperson, and others
-
Crisis in the Red Zone
- The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come
- By: Richard Preston
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013-2014 Ebola epidemic. From the number-one best-selling author of The Hot Zone, now a National Geographic original miniseries....
-
-
Much thriller, not so much science
- By ahoi on 07-28-19
By: Richard Preston
-
Your Heart, My Hands
- An Immigrant's Remarkable Journey to Become One of America's Preeminent Cardiac Surgeons
- By: Arun K. Singh MD, John Hanc - contributor, Delos Cosgrove MD - foreword
- Narrated by: Shridhar Solanki
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leaving a life marked by crippling setbacks and his father's doubt, in 1967 a 20-something doctor from India arrived in America with only five dollars and the desire to claim his American dream. Faced with an entirely new culture, racism, and the lasting effects of disabling childhood injuries, through hard work and perseverance he overcame all odds. Now having performed over 15,000 open-heart surgeries, more than nearly every surgeon in history, Dr. Singh reflects on his most memorable patients and his incredible personal life.
-
-
From Dyslexia and Crushed Hands Rise Greatness
- By Bailey Rose on 02-02-25
By: Arun K. Singh MD, and others
-
All That Moves Us
- A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience
- By: Jay Wellons
- Narrated by: Jay Wellons
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations—there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain—in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human—every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist.
-
-
The best narration I've heard in a long time.
- By Zoe on 10-29-22
By: Jay Wellons
-
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
- A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU
- By: Dr. Wes Ely
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Dr. Wes Ely
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the next ten years, 40 to 60 million people in this country will be admitted to the ICU. Most of these hospitalizations will be sudden, unexpected, and harrowing experiences that can alter patients and their families physically and emotionally, with effects that endure for years. In this rich blend of science, medical history, profoundly humane patient stories, and personal reflection, Dr. Wes Ely describes his mission to prevent patients from being inadvertently harmed by the technology that is keeping them alive.
-
-
A clarion call in medicine
- By S. Langdon on 09-13-21
By: Dr. Wes Ely
-
When Blood Breaks Down
- Life Lessons from Leukemia
- By: Mikkael A. Sekeres
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediately, when you are not in your right mind. And yet you pull yourself together and start asking questions. Beside you is your doctor, whose job it is to solve the awful puzzle of bone marrow gone wrong. The two of you are in it together. In When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael Sekeres, a leading cancer specialist, takes listeners on the journey that patient and doctor travel together.
-
-
Engaging and informative
- By Dr. Micala Darcel on 03-02-23
-
One by One by One
- Making a Small Difference Amid a Billion Problems
- By: Aaron Berkowitz
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Aaron Berkowitz had just finished his neurology training when he was sent to Haiti on his first assignment with Partners in Health. There, he meets Janel, a 23-year-old man with the largest brain tumor Berkowitz or any of his neurosurgeon colleagues at Harvard Medical School have ever seen. Determined to live up to Partners in Health’s mission statement “to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need”, Berkowitz tries to save Janel’s life by bringing him back to Boston for a 12-hour surgery.
-
-
Excellent
- By Alan on 02-07-21
By: Aaron Berkowitz
-
Angels in the ER
- Inspiring True Stories from an Emergency Room Doctor
- By: Robert Lesslie
- Narrated by: Pat Grimes
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years in the ER could become a résumé for despair, but for best-selling author Dr. Robert D. Lesslie, it's a foundation for inspiring stories of everyday angels - friends, nurses, doctors, patients, and even strangers who offer love, help, and support in the midst of trouble. The ER is a difficult and challenging place to be. Yet the same pressures and stresses that make this place so challenging also provide an opportunity to experience some of life's greatest wonders and mysteries.
-
-
As a nurse for 54 years, I applaud your effort to paint a true picture of Emergency Medicine!
- By Reading Grandma on 08-30-21
By: Robert Lesslie
-
Every Minute Is a Day
- A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege
- By: Robert Meyer MD, Dan Koeppel
- Narrated by: Robert Meyer MD, Dan Koeppel
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When former New York Times journalist Dan Koeppel texted his cousin Robert Meyer, a 20-year veteran of the emergency room at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, he expected to hear that things were hectic. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being overwhelmed, where do you think you are? Koeppel asked. Meyer’s grave reply - 100 - was merely the cusp of the crisis that would soon touch every part of the globe.
-
-
story
- By cc113 on 04-13-25
By: Robert Meyer MD, and others
-
Doctors and Friends
- By: Kimmery Martin
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus, Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah, Compton, and Kira have been close friends since medical school, reuniting once a year for a much-needed vacation. Just as they gather to travel in Spain, an outbreak of a fast-spreading virus throws the world into chaos.
-
-
Post COVID
- By RueRue on 01-09-23
By: Kimmery Martin
-
The Beauty in Breaking
- A Memoir
- By: Michele Harper
- Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michele Harper is a female African-American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, DC, in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.
-
-
Fantastic!!
- By Monica MD on 07-09-20
By: Michele Harper
-
When I Die I'm Going to Heaven 'Cause I've Spent My Time in Hell
- A Memoir of My Year As an Army Nurse in Vietnam
- By: Barbara Hesselman Kautz MSN RN
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When she was 18, she joined the army to finance her nursing education. With less than six months of nursing experience, she was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam. True tales of the war that are by turns horrifying and humorous, told with an eye for detail, by a woman who was in the thick of it.
-
-
Loved this
- By N. Thomas on 02-13-20
What listeners say about The Lassa Ward
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael Curran
- 04-16-21
Thanks for sharing your experience
Dr. Donaldson, I want to thank you for your courage and vulnerability that you shared in this book. Your patients will benefit from this humbling experience!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AW122
- 09-20-21
Colonialism meets shameless self promotion
If you are looking for a story about a young medical student who gains insight into Lassa fever and medicine in general, look elsewhere. The author seems genuinely unaware that calling the native people uneducated and dirty is problematic at best. He hardly describes the actual pathology of Lassa, rambling instead about how he was so willing to put himself in danger for the good of those poor people. ALSO, HE NEVER CONTACTED LASSA FEVER. So bad it made me angry.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!