The role of an anaesthetist in a field hospital during the cholera epidemic among Rwandan refugees in Goma.

In 1849 John Snow, already the leading anaesthetic practitioner and innovator of his day, made a historic contribution to the epidemiology of infectious disease by his famous study of the distribution of cholera around the area of Broad Street in London. We report on our experience as anaesthetists in a field hospital, dispatched as part of the international rescue effort to Goma, Zaire, to help combat the effects of cholera among the Rwandan refugees.