Portal:Viruses/Selected biography/5

Aniru Sahib Sahib Conteh (6 August 1942 – 4 April 2004) was a Sierra Leonean physician and expert on the clinical treatment of Lassa fever, a viral haemorrhagic fever endemic to West Africa.

He joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Lassa fever programme in Segbwema, first as superintendent and then as clinical director. After the Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991, Conteh moved to the Kenema Government Hospital, where he spent the next two decades running the only dedicated Lassa fever ward in the world. He collaborated with the British charity Merlin to promote public health in Sierra Leone through education and awareness campaigns intended to prevent Lassa fever. With little funding and few supplies, he successfully reduced mortality rates and saved many lives until an accidental needlestick injury led to his own death from the disease in 2004.

Conteh received renewed public attention in 2009 as the hero of Ross I. Donaldson's memoir, The Lassa Ward.