ABSTRACT
Colette Matshimoseka arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on the cold morning of February 3, 2001. After a seemingly interminable
flight that took her from Kinshasa to Addis Ababa, Rome, Newark, and
Toronto, she drove to Hamilton, where she stayed with friends before moving
on to Montreal to attend a conference. During her first night in Hamilton,
Matshimoseka fell ill: ‘‘She had a headache, no appetite, she was confused.’’3
The next morning, Sunday, February 4, she was taken by ambulance to
Henderson General Hospital in Hamilton. The emergency room physicians,
suspecting she was suffering from ‘‘low grade malaria,’’ admitted her. Their differential diagnosis took a sinister, if not predictable, turn, ‘‘especially
considering where she [Colette Matshimoseka] came from,’’4 when the hospi-
tal’s consulting infectious disease specialist, Dr. Douglas MacPherson, expan-
ded the differential to include Ebola and a host of other hemorrhagic fevers –
Lassa, Marburg, and Crimean-Congo.5 Dr. MacPherson’s differential set in
motion a network of public health and media machines that would trans-
form Matshimoseka into North America’s ‘‘first case of Ebola.’’6
