Recognition of Africa’s major endemic diseases of human beings was apparently well advanced by 1900. Malaria, trypanosomiasis, yellow fever, schistosomiasis, typhoid fever, brucellosis, and a long list of other afflictions had been characterized. But then, in 1969, a new member of the coterie of major endemic diseases of Africa entered the scene: Lassa fever.

The events leading to the discovery were dramatic. A nurse, Laura Wine, in a mission hospital in Lassa, Nigeria, became ill, progressed unfavorably, and died, despite the marshaling of antimalarials, antibiotics, antimicrobial agents, and supportive therapy. This death, as a statistic, would probably have been labeled “malaria” and thus been registered as such in national and World Health Organization disease records. But another nurse, Charlotte Shaw, who attended the first, also became ill. She was taken by small plane from Lassa to the Evangel Hospital in Jos, Nigeria, operated by the Sudan Interior Mission, where she died while being attended by physicians Harold White and Janet Troup, and nurse Lily Pinneo. Again, there was no firm diagnosis. Pinneo then got sick. Doctors at the hospital were thoroughly alarmed. She was evacuated, via Jos and Lagos, to America by plane, and was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where she was attended by John Frame, E. Leifer, and D. J. Gocke.

The Yale Arbovirus Research Unit in New Haven, Connecticut, was alerted by Frame, who helped to get specimens for the unit. By a combination of serendipity and skill, an agent was isolated - a virus, unknown hitherto to humans. It was called “Lassa virus” (Buckley, Casals, and Downs 1970).