In a News Feature published on December 17, 2014, the scientific journal Nature honored Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan as one of “Nature’s 10 – Ten people who mattered this year.” Dr. Khan, a leading infectious-disease physician and scientist, was a member of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium, and part of an international team of researchers who conducted the first genetic sequencing studies of the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. The chief physician at the Lassa Fever Research Program at Kenema Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, Dr. Khan became infected with Ebola while treating patients in Kenema in July 2014, a time when the hospital was overwhelmed with patients infected with Ebola. He dedicated his life to caring for his patients, and to furthering our scientific understanding of the deadly pathogens his patients carried. “According to those who knew him, Khan believed that research and medicine should serve everyone – not just those able to access and afford it.”[1]
Read Nature’s 10 – Ten people who mattered this year.
Read additional tributes to Dr. Khan, and the many other healthcare workers in Kenema who sacrificed their lives in the fight against Ebola:
– A tribute to Sheik Humarr Khan and all the healthcare workers in West Africa who have sacrificed in the fight against Ebola virus disease: Mae we hush
– Sheik Humarr Khan