Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, a 39-year-old Sierra Leonean physician, was one of the Ebola epidemic's victims. A star in Sierra Leone's medical establishment, Khan took care of more than 100 Ebola patients, including two nurses at the hospital in Kenema, before he contracted Ebola. An airplane stood on the tarmac for 72 hours waiting to fly him out of Sierra Leone, but layers of international bureaucracy kept him off the plane until it was too late. The only way to combat the virus effectively is for Westerners to recognize the critical value of the indigenous physicians and healthcare workers, to protect them, and to earn back the confidence of the peoples of West Africa. “It would have been such a good thing if Khan had been saved, because it would have shown people that there is a path forward,” says virologist and Ebola expert Thomas W. Geisbert of UTMB.