"How Ebola Roared Back"

"On the flight back to Atlanta, Dr. Pierre Rollin snoozed in Seat 26C in his usual imperturbable way, arms folded, head bobbing, oblivious to loudspeaker announcements and the periodic passing of the galley cart.

This routine had become part of his lore. During each viral outbreak, Dr. Rollin, the top Ebola expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would outlast his younger colleagues in the hotel lobby, staying awake until 3 or 4 a.m. to plug new cases into a database. He managed to do this at 61 because he possessed an uncanny ability to sleep anywhere anytime, whether on the hardwood floor of a staff house in Zaire (Ebola, 1995) or in a back seat lurching down a cratered road in Madagascar (Rift Valley fever, 2008).

On this trip home from Guinea on May 7, Dr. Rollin (pronounced Ro-LAHN in his native French) found himself at particular peace. His five-and-a-half-week stay as the C.D.C.'s team leader in the opening days of Guinea’s effort to control Ebola had gone about as well as one could have hoped."

Kevin Sack, Sheri Fink, Pam Belluck and Adam Nossiter report for the New York Times  with photographs by Daniel Berehulak December 29, 2014.