several weeks before he came back. does medical student i was left in this war which in america we would call it a high acuity ward and suddenly i had all these patients in my care. really, it did have a lot to do with facing my fears. there was not many supplies in the ward and there were not that many things i didn't know how to use. that was the good thing. the bad thing i didn't have any tests and i didn't know what i was doing. so the combination was somewhat difficult. the only test we had at the ward was a test called the hemat crit. we would take a little bit of blood from someone and we would put it in a little centrifuge and it would spin around and you could look and see what percentage of their blood was

made up of red blood cells because one of the medications caused people to be anemic. about half of the time the electricity wouldn't work. so we would take the vial and put it in a pouch thing and have a rope attached to it and we would swing around it and you would look at it, all right, that's our test.k [laughter] >> so it was quite limited, you could say. so throughout the time i think in the beginning it was just shock and then really i did come to terms with having to be caring for the patients. i think especially as a healthcare worker now i can say that the most difficult people to have sick and to have dying on you are the kids and i definitely felt that there as well. and we saw quite a few patients,

me and the nurses, luckily, the nurses, of course, new a little bit of what was going on. and one of those patients was by the name of miriama. we saw quite a few patients who were pregnant and when you're pregnant who have lassa and what happens when you have lassa fever is that the virus can get into that area and then it can replicate itself and grow without the body able to attack it. so the mortality rates for normal people are very high but the mortality rates for pregnant women are even higher so i had a few amount of people coming back and forth from the maternity ward and one of them whom i saw on the first day that dr. conte left me alone and she was a young woman. she didn't quite know her age it was around 12 or 13 and she was pregnant. and she also had lassa fever so she had a lot of things going --

and she happened to be in the middle of africa with me as her doctor. [laughter] >> she had a lot of things going against her. [laughter] >> and one of the treatments for lassa fever, the only treatment for lassa fever is a drug. you can treat lassa fever if you know that the people have lassa fever essentially before they have symptoms. which is, of course, a bit of a paradox. but when people just have a fever, if you give them the drug they can do pretty well but once they get the full blown lassa fever symptoms where it's pretty obvious they have the fever, then it's too late to give the people the drug. unfortunately, the drug also can potentially have side effects for the fetus. so she came in and she had been -- she had been in the maternity ward and had come up and i'd seen her as a patient and she had a fever and a lot of things seemed like she might have lassa fever but i wasn't 100% sure about that and i had to make the decision whether or

not to treat her and potentially injure the fetus or to not treat her and at this point dr. conte had left and i was all alone. so i guess our last reading, which is about the day before i had started to feel that she was having contractions and she was about to deliver. and one of the nurses was a traditional birth attendant and delivered children in africa all the time. and so she said, okay, it's okay for you to go home. and when you get back, we'll see what happens. so this is the next morning. so i asked amy who sat at her normal perch in the ward, did she deliver after midnight the nurse replied. a boy or a girl i interrupted excitedly, a boy, amy said. i rushed off to her room. amy trailing behind me.

the young mother slept on her bed, her boyfriend attentively by her head although they looked more like prom dates than parents it was an enduring image. where's the baby, i whispered to amy who still followed. there, amy answered. her voice flat as she pointed across the room to a small bundle on the other cot. not going to make it, she said. what, i said? i put on gloves and gently unwrapped the blanket. i found lifeless flesh that unleashed from my hand just like the cadaver in medical school. i scooped up the baby cradling my thumb and index finger while his limbs flopped loosely to both sides. consistent with my previous estimates of now 34 weeks, the child was about twice as large as the palm of my hand. it should have been enough time

to survive. i inspected the baby with a growing sense of remorse. the wrinkled flesh that rested on my arm had no obvious deformities. his body although minute appeared properly formed. had my use of the medicine to treat his mother caused this awful tragedy? full of self-doubt i felt a desperate urge to undo what i might have done. a tiny motion caught my eye the abdomen of the small infant stirred faintly. i placed two fingers across the boy's belly to confirm his diminutive movement. my pulse quickend. her child moved to the edge of death but had not crossed that fine line. i stuck a latex glove in his mouth. a healthy infant would start sucks. her newborn had no response. what happened i asked amy urgently unable to take my eyes

off the baby. too small to live, she answered. previously a traditional birth attendant amy had delivered the child early in the morning. she reported as a matter of factually that the labor had left her exhausted despite her child's small size. did he cry, i asked? still confused as to why the infant had done so poorly.

>> i knew improper treatment killed many of them. with the worst maternal rates in the world even those born under the best of conditions in sierra leone had an uncertain future it was a cruel indifference was a compassionate gesture sparing the mother what the nurse felt was the inevitable death of the baby. i was unsure the patient understood the question at first but the young woman not her head in unambiguous affirmation. tell her i don't know if he will survive, i said. but if she wants, we can try to keep him. amy hesitated for a moment and then translated. the mother noded her head again, yes, yes. time jumped into fast forward. we have to get him warm i urged anxiously with newfound purpose. newborns have very little fat and were unable to maintain their own body heat. there was little i could do are for the baby but hope that the

infant's decrease in body temperature was the cause of his unresponsiveness. the ward had no warming cubicles or heating blankets like in the states i had amy me strip the mother and the body of the baby. we proceeded to wrap the pair in every available blanket and transform them into undistinguishable mass. heaped high upon the cot. the catharsis of action over there was nothing more to do but to wait. i paced the halls watching my watch. the cover pot covers quickest as i resisted the recurrent urge to take off the blankets and check on the progress of the hidden baby. at amy's insistence we saw the other patients all of whom passed in the blur. although i made a check on

everyone in the ward nothing could pull my thoughts away from the heavy bundled in the far room. immediately after finishing, i looked in again on the mother but could assess little beneath the pile of blankets. like an expectant father i returned to pacing the halls with pauses every few laps to check on the pair. our infant would have to be born twice to live. an hour later i woke the mother and she looked out like a confused tortoise that had flipped through its shell. i peeled away her coverings unsure if i would find a living baby. i sighed with relief that his color was better. the flesh of a healthy newborn but the sucking response again had no response. muttering encouraging words i covered the pair back up before i passed out the doorway the mother was asleep again.

i busied myself around the ward cleaning up the office hoping i was doing the right thing. i waited uneasily until noon before checking on my charges again unwrapping the layers i found the little infant inside warmed to body temperature. he lay with legs and armed curled close to body his hands clenched in a fist. he pulled back giving some resistance. i stuck my finger in his mouth and felt an uncoordinated but a distinct lick, better i said to myself with my best doctor's reserve trying to restrain myself with jumping from excitement. the mother held her child in a grasp she was obviously starting to bond with the baby. after molding her hands to make the paramour comfortable i covered them both again. as i passed out of the room, i

paused to look at the indistinct heap through the doorway. the more the mother became attached to her baby, the worse it would be if he had died. i doubted amy would forgive me if that happened. around 3:00 in the afternoon i checked again. the tiny was pink and i laughed allowed the child tickled me with its tiny sucking which was the most joyous sensation that i ever experienced. i wanted the baby to breast feed. i had never felt such pressure to start. normal babies have access to several stores for several days before the process begins but her infant had been both premature and traumatized i was uncertain he would last without nourishment. together amy and i sat the mother up and she wobbled weakly. i tried to get her to hold the baby properly to feed. after an unsuccessful half hour

we finally gave up. inwardly concerned about how much time we had before the infant tired completely. the mother had not eaten in over a day we got her more food. amy wore an unpassive face shielding judgment. i wondered if she felt i was being a naive westerner going to such lengths to save a baby that she was convinced who would die. the sun was setting. additional sleep had soothed the mother's shaking hands and she stroked her baby's cheek with her nipple. he reached out with his lips but failed to latch on. another half hour left me disillusioned and the mother frustrated. we were about to give up when suddenly the infant dainty mouth finally found the correct spot. resounding smacks filled the room as the baby slurped vigorously. it was a simple action but i felt there could be nothing more wondrous not even if the sun had

burned through our life down radiant light into the battered ward. struck in awe the mother and i gained at the bundled of determined motion. it was an intense world in which i found myself. once severe in its taking but equally generous in its giving. the new mother fed her new child and i gave silent thanks for our tiny miracle of living. thank you. so that, i think, pretty much is going to conclude our reading portion of the event. and we're going to move on to some book -- actually, to some questions. before that, i would like to book is dedicated to dr. conte who was a friend and a mentor and a true humanitarian so i always like to mention that at

the talks. if anyone has questions because of the filming, please use the microphone and please have a question. >> what kind of work are you doing now and how does your experience relate to what you're doing there? >> thank you. currently, since writing the book and being back, my humanitarian work currently is mostly in iraq. i go back and forth about every other month. i'm helping to set up the emergency medical system there essentially. you would think in iraq that they would have a functioning emergency and trauma care system but before this last year essentially they didn't really have much of anything there. and with a medical group called the international medical corps which is in santa monica as well we're helping to start the ambulance system. we'll have several hundred doctors trained in emergency medicine over this next year and

upwards of 700 paramedics and so forth on the ambulances. thank you. >> hi, russ. >> hey. >> so other than your sense of adventure and maybe another, you know, flight that's not leaving anytime soon, i'm just curious to know what do you feel like was the main reason -- like what drove you to stay? i mean, was there any sense that you were afraid to fail? >> yeah, i think that's a great question. i mean, i think that was definitely part of it. i had set in my mind and i think -- i read a little bit about it in the book when i was young i dreamed of doing humanitarian work. i'm originally from minnesota. and, of course, all the humanitarian work i would dream of would be in a much warmer

climate. [laughter] >> and -- but i did grow up, you know, eventually wanting to be a doctor and when i went to medical school, the main thing in my mind at least was doing humanitarian aid work and this was really -- although i traveled and worked some abroad before that, this was really my first time kind of on my own doing what i thought was the humanitarian aid work i wanted to do and i think definitely in the back of my mind was a thing, especially, after years and years of building this up, anyone who has gone through medical school or had friends go through medical school know how much a long period of time it is and suddenly to get there at the thing that you wanted to do and say, no, it's too much for me, that almost in many ways, i think, was a bigger fear than the fears around me of the lassa virus and of caring for patients and so forth. and i think that that in part kept me going. sometimes doing things that maybe i shouldn't have kept going -- or doing or i guess i barely got through doing. >> thanks.

we're okay? i guess they can hear. >> does the lassa still exist? is it still a problem? >> okay. so the question was, does the lassa virus still exist? yes, the lassa certainly still exists. unlike some of the other viral fevers like ebola in particular, we actually don't know what the reservoir of ebola. we thought it's bats. we're not for sure. for lassa fever we do know there is a rat as a host. and the humans are getting it as an accident and it's spreading person from person. and there's concentration of those rats in those areas of west africa which is why it's there. when i was there it seems like the easiest thing to do is not have the virus spread from the rats to the people. and so we did a lot of public health outreach to try and get

that to stop happening. we'd put up posters about the rats and so forth but the people in that area -- it was a very poor area and they'd just finished going through about a decades' worth of war and in particular, they liked to eat the rats. and the rats -- they would tell me was a very sweet meat. they would always say it's so sweet. [laughter] >> and i would -- you know, you'd have these older guys who would be looking at you like, how can -- one guy how can such a sweet meat be wrong. [laughter] >> it just can't be wrong. and so we went through all these different things to try to get them to stop eating the rats. at one point right before i got there and i described this a little bit in the book, they had decide to put cats out in all the villages with the idea being the cats would go eat the rats and we'd be done with lassa fever. and so evidently they brought out these kittens and the kittens were growing and everybody was very excited about the project and it was very environmentally sensitive and

all these things and then suddenly one day the health workers went out there and all the rats -- all the cats were gone. and so then they went around asking, you know, what had happened the villagers were waiting for the cats to fatten up and had eaten them all. [laughter] >> so that didn't work particularly well either. but the lassa fever, unfortunately, is still around. is still around. >> what has happened at the lassa ward. would you ever go back? >> that's a great question. so things -- since dr. conte's death afterwards a fund was set up in his name to try and help support things at the lassa ward and it definitely went through some difficult periods. there's actually a period of time write thought about quickly medical school and going back. but since that point, things

have gotten better. actually the u.s. state department has agreed to fund a new lassa ward there and there is a new doctor, an african doctor, who's taken over dr. conte's place and half of the proceeds from this work, my proceeds from the work are going to be going to that area to help support it. so things are definitely not completely better. it has been good that since charles taylor is now on trial at the hague it seems like a lot of the conflict in the region has died down. and so sierra leone is much more table. liberia has experienced a period of stability and hopefully if that continues to go forward, that is going to be one of the other major things. i mean, once people have money and food and so forth, then i think a lot of the things of trying to get them to convince them not to eat rats and so forth are going to be a lot easier to do. okay. well, i think that's about time

for that. john? i think we'll do some book-signing now if anyone has books that they would like. john, do you have any announcements? okay. well, thank you very much. [applause] >> ross donaldson teaches medicine at ucla and works at a trauma center in los angeles. for more information on dr. donaldson and his book, "the lassa ward," visit rossdonaldson.com. >> today on in depth, bill ayers joins book tv for a live three-hour interview at the litfest. we'll take your calls at noon eastern. ♪ >> this summer, book tv is asking, what are you reading? >> congressman culberson, what are you reading this summer?

>> i always have two or three books going at the same time. one person who i always read on a regular basis is my hero, thomas jefferson's writings. frankly, a day doesn't go by that i don't read something that he's written. i'll continue to work my way through his letters in particular. mr. jefferson wrote so much that although i've probably spent the last -- my gosh, almost 30 years reading through his works i've only made it maybe about halfway through. so i'll continue to work on reading thomas jefferson's letters. i've always had a particular fascination with history so i'll continue to read works by a number of different authors, one i'm working through right now is james mcpherson's book on lincoln's role as commander in chief during the civil war, which i have found particularly relevant to the debate going on today with the outrage by liberals about george w. bush's

use of interrogation of these killers at guantanamo, which has saved lives in fact, dropping a caterpillar in a box with a terrorist is no idea of torture and frankly if it's a choice between dipping the guy's head in water or saving thousands of americans i would assume dip his head in war. if you hear what lincoln did during the civil war lincoln as commander in chief as james mcpherson points out exercised incredible power in his authority as commander in chief, which is what frankly george bush has done. president bush just as abraham lincoln did, took his role as commander in chief very seriously. and used the very broad grant of authority given to the president by the constitution it off interrogate these killers and find out what they were up to and save lives particularly in los angeles, for example. there would have been thousands of deaths in downtown los angeles but for the interrogation of those

terrorists. lincoln suspended habeas corpus. arrested over 13,000 americans simply for speaking out in favor of the confederacy's right to secede. and suspended habeas corpus nationwide, used his powers as commander in chief to do all sorts of things that caused outrage during the war and nobody questioned it. so i'll be reading -- i always have a particular interest in constitutional history and the war between the states so i'll -- i'm finishing up this book. i highly recommend james mcpherson to anyone. i always keep several books going at the same time. a whole second area that i work on continuously are diaries of texans during the war between the states and in particular i found this one. i can't recommend this one highly enough. it's hard to find but it's -- it is a soldiers letter to charming nellie and he's a wonderful writer. he does a great job of writing in technicolor.

wonderful personal anecdotes of texans in the war. you can see on the cover the lone star which is a great deal to me. i am a passionate jefferson/libertarian. i want the government off my back, out of my pocket and out of my life. and that's what the lone star stood for. i collect these worn by texans and the army of republic of texas and the war between the states so i had a particular interest in fascination with texans and texas history so i'll be reading a lot of texas history as well. i'm doing a lot of times studying the coming generational storm. this is a particularly important subject for all of us as americans to pay attention to because the comptroller estimates we have about five years to act, five to six years to really get spinning under control or we're on a path that would lead to the day in about 12 years from now when the u.s.

treasury bills, the safest investment in the history of the world will be graded as junk bonds and that's unacceptable to me. it's outrageous. i voted against $2.3 trillion of spending under george bush. i voted against $1.6 trillion of spending under this new bunch already. they're spending money faster than any congress in the history of the nation. so all of us as americans need to be paying close attention to the approaching hurricane, financial hurricane that's coming. medicare, medicaid, social security, all driving us into bankruptcy if we're not careful. i don't want america to become argentina so i will be spend a lot of time this summer reading -- focusing on history because as winston churchill once said, the farther end of the past we can see, the farther into the future we'll be able to predict. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our website at booktv.org.

>> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals over the next few months.

one of the advice columns that she read from time to time that i thought i was