Kwan Kew Lai, “Lest We Forget” at Belmont Books

In 2014 after fighting through yards of bureaucratic red tape, leaving her family, and putting her own health at risk in order to help suffering strangers, Kwan Kew Lai finally arrived in Africa to volunteer as an infectious disease specialist in the heart of the largest Ebola outbreak in history. What she found was not only blistering heat, inadequate working conditions, and deadly, unrelenting illness, but hope, resilience, and incredible courage.

Lest We Forget chronicles the harrowing and inspiring time spent serving on the front lines of the ongoing Ebola outbreak–the complicated personal protective equipment, the chlorine-scented air, the tropical heat, and the heartbreaking difficulties of treating patients she could not touch. Dr. Lai interweaves original diary entries to create a gripping narrative about life, death, and human relationships that will leave no reader unmoved.

This book exposes the raw brutality of Ebola, as well as the chaotic nature of the undersupplied and understaffed health infrastructure in the developing world. At once a memoir of triumphs and failures and a memorial, this book will ensure that the victims of Ebola and the fighters who sought to heal them will not be forgotten.

Kwan Kew Lai is an infectious disease specialist. More than a decade ago, after first volunteering in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, she left her position as a full-time professor of medicine and now divides her time between practicing clinical medicine and aiding with disaster relief in various parts of the world. Seeing the horrific effects of the Ebola outbreak on the people of West Africa, she felt a moral obligation to be both a participant and a witness of the efforts to stamp out this epidemic.