A review of THE COMING PLAGUE: NEWLY EMERGING DISEASES IN A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE by Laurie Garrett, published in 1994. Chapter 5: Yambuku – EBOLA
Sure, he had a fever, but it was undoubtedly just the malaria again
Mabalo Lokela (whom friends called Antoine) was in great mood. Sure, he had a fever, but it was undoubtedly just the malaria again. The important thing was that he was back from a great vacation – one of the few he’d had in his forty-four years. While he waited for one of the Sisters to give him malaria medicine, Mabalo shared with his colleagues at the Yambuku mission stories of his recent travels. When he got back to Yambuku he bought some fresh antelope meat in the market and his wife, Mbuzu Sophie, who was eight months pregnant, made a stew for a family celebration.
He was never seen again
Two days later, on August 28, 1976, a thirty-year-old man came to the Yambuku Mission Hospital complaining of terrible diarrhea. Though nobody at the mission recognized the man, he told the Sisters that he came from the nearby village of Yandongi. The case of the man from Yandongi was odd and Sisters Béata, Edmonda, and Myriam weren’t sure of the source of his illness. They put the man in one of the 120 beds and, for two days, debated his diagnosis. After two days the man left the hospital against the Sisters’ wishes, his diarrhea and epistaxis, or severe nosebleed, still unresolved. He was never seen again, though events days after his disappearance would prompt dozens of investigators from all over the world to scour villages throughout the Bumba Zone in search of the elusive patient.
There was no doctor in Yambuku
Since 1935 the major hospital and dispensary for some 60,000 villagers living in the central Bumba Zone was that operated by Belgian Catholic missionaries in the village of Yambuku. A staff of seventeen ‘nurses’ – so designated, though none of the Sisters had attended a certified nursing school – and medical assistants tended to the health needs of the community. There was no doctor in Yambuku.
His temperature soared over 100°F
Antoine spent days on end at the mission so it was natural that he returned to the Sisters on September 1, 1976 when, despite the quinine injection, his temperature soared over 100°F. They checked his vital signs and told Antoine to rest for a few days, where Sophie tended to him.
Yombe Ngongo, Lizenge Embale, Ekombe Mongwa, Angi Dobola and Sebo Dombe
At the same time as Antoine was awaiting his chloroquinine shot, sixteen-year-old Yombe Ngongo lay in Yambuku Hospital undergoing transfusions to counter her severe anemia. Nearby, twenty-five-year-old Lizenge Embale was recuperating from what seemed to be malaria, tended by her husband, Ekombe Mongwa. Angi Dobola was recovering from hernia surgery, watched closely by his wife, Sebo Dombe, who complained to the Sisters of exhaustion.
On September 5 Antoine returned to the mission critically ill
On September 5 Antoine returned to the mission critically ill. He was vomiting and had acute diarrhea, leaving him so dehydrated that he had ‘ghost eyes’. His chest hurt, he had a terrible headache, fevers continued, he was deeply agitated and confused. His nose bled, his gums bled, and there was blood in his diarrhea and vomitus.