When Ross Donaldson gave up his comfy life in the U.S. to go into Sierra Leone, a country ravaged by fighting and plagued by conflict from neighboring Liberia, he was an idealistic student. When he left, he was lucky to be alive. In a hospital with few supplies, he had to care for patients afflicted with Lassa fever, a highly contagious hemorrhagic illness similar to Ebola. Forced to confront his own fear of the disease, he made life-and-death decisions in the face of a never-ending onslaught of the sick. Ultimately, he found himself not only fighting for the lives of others but for his own. The Lassa Ward is the memoir of a young man studying to be a physician, while making his way through a land where a battle against one of the world's deadliest diseases matches a struggle for human rights and decency. It is also the story of a young doctor who rises to the occasion and does his best to save lives, but not without finally confronting his own human frailty.