THE LASSA WARD: One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest Diseases. Ross I. Donaldson. St. Martin's. 270 pages. $24.95.

Just as the H1N1 virus spreads across countries and continents, infecting our consciousness with fresh fear, The Lassa Ward arrives to remind us how lucky we are, graced with specialized, if costly, medical care and a general health we take for granted while cushioned in what Dr. Ross Donaldson calls ``a cocoon of safety.''

Donaldson's detailed memoir takes us inside Sierra Leone and Liberian refugee camps in the summer of 2003, during his intrepid firsthand education in the deadly West African Lassa virus. Before cutting into the meat of this journey, however, the narrative sets off with two contrived and disconnected beginnings: a dramatic journal entry, which reads as if invented, then a short prologue where Donaldson lies prone in a modern hospital, seemingly a superfluous attempt to engage readers' interest in discovering whether Donaldson contracts Lassa during his volunteer work. Once the central story begins, it's hampered still by Donaldson's regrettably overwritten prose crowded with obvious, often repetitive details and qualifiers; such lines as ''The lumbering transport bucked in stubborn protest as a lone light drew us down into flickering shadows'' trip up the pace rather than sketch a vivid scene.

Yet once this bumpy road is traveled, and Donaldson arrives in the southern Sierra Leone border town of Kenema, the writing and the story flow uninterrupted, buoyed by Donaldson's earnest, idealistic reflections. Though he spends just two months at the world's only Lassa facility, almost every day is accounted for chronologically, combined with perceptive observations on race relations, faith, politics and the diamond trade, without giving any topic undue weight or attention.

The book is also packed with intense soul-searching, including Donaldson's continual question of whether ''coming to Kenema was a brave idea or just insanely stupid.'' As he learns and observes, readers wonder, too, though at a comfortable distance from Lassa, a highly contagious viral hemorrhagic fever like Ebola that causes late-stage victims to leak blood and fluid from every orifice.

For Donaldson, confronting the virus was the ''ultimate test'' of his oath to care for the sick, and though he was the only volunteer, he wasn't alone in his humanitarian effort. His dialogue with colleagues is among the book's most evocative passages, and each person takes on a larger-than-life quality, whether their roles are malaria control, water improvement or health care. The real hero, though, is Donaldson's mentor Dr. Conteh, who dedicated his life and career to the ward's Lassa patients. And when Conteh departs unexpectedly for two weeks, Donaldson the med student must step up and become a real doctor, diagnosing, treating, and devising unique solutions to care for patients while lacking crucial medicine and supplies.

Today Donaldson continues his humanitarian work abroad. But The Lassa Ward is testament to one of his greatest lessons, that ``regardless of geography . . . human anatomy is universal, as is human emotion.''

Christine Thomas is a writer in Hawaii.

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