Aniru Conteh

Life & Legacy

Aniru Sahib Sahib Conteh (6 August 1942 – 4 April 2004) was a Sierra Leonean physician and expert on the clinical treatment of Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever endemic to West Africa caused by the Lassa virus. Conteh studied medicine at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and taught at Ibadan Teaching Hospital. He later returned to Sierra Leone where he joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Lassa fever program at Nixon Methodist Hospital in Segbwema, first as superintendent and then as clinical director.

After the Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991, the CDC closed their program in Segbwema. Conteh and his medical team moved from Segbwema to the Kenema Government Hospital (KGH), where he spent the next two decades running the only dedicated Lassa fever ward in the world. Conteh collaborated with the British charity Merlin to promote public health in Sierra Leone through education and awareness campaigns intended to prevent Lassa fever. With little funding and few supplies, Conteh successfully reduced mortality rates and saved many lives until an accidental needlestick injury led to his own death from the disease in 2004.

Conteh received renewed public attention in 2009 as the hero of Ross I. Donaldson's memoir, The Lassa Ward.