Could a pregnant woman change the way we think about Ebola?

THE WASHINGTON POST by Kevin Sieff                          Jan. 5, 2015

PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — When Fatmata Kabia walked into the Ebola isolation center, her chances of survival were almost zero.

Not because her symptoms were particularly bad — though they were. Not because the disease had already killed most of her family — though it had. Kabia, 21, appeared doomed for another reason: She was pregnant.

Meratu Koroma, 18, four months pregnant, battles intense pain while waiting for an Ebola test in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Few diseases are less understood than the Ebola virus, which has claimed more than 7,900 lives across West Africa. But one thing is clear: Pregnant Ebola patients rarely survive. And their babies never do.

Even as doctors watched a succession of Ebola-stricken pregnant women die or lose their babies in recent months, they weren’t entirely sure why it was happening. Perhaps the mothers’ immune systems were weakened, making them more susceptible to the incapacitating fever that accompanies the disease, or maybe the virus pooled in fetal fluid. Some of the babies died early in pregnancy, others closer to term.

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