‘I survived Ebola; now my blood fights the disease’

Nobel Mabanzi, who survived Ebola in Kikwit  [  PHOTO  ; STANDARD]

DRC: Nobel Mabanzi had a passion for medicine. Growing up in Kikwit, a dusty town some 700km south west of Kinshasa – about the distance from Nairobi to Malindi - Mabanzi found himself years later in the storm of the world’s most deadly virus attack.

Mabanzi, 44, now the dean of studies at the Kikwit School of Nursing, was then a young student just out of nursing school. “I had chosen to pursue a career as a lab technician.”

He had grown up in a town whose name ironically translates as “drank drank”. Yet Kikwit, which is in Bandundu province is the last place you will find pedestrians walking the town streets in a drunken stupor.

Instead, it was the town that was catapulted to the international arena with the second recorded Ebola attack in 1995. And Mabanzi was one of the victims; but luckily he survived although the disease killed 384 residents.

Mabanzi was working at Kikwit General Hospital analysing blood samples drawn from victims. The first known Ebola outbreak in 1976 – also in DRC - was catastrophic and puzzling because Ebola was largely unknown.

Subsequent attacks found local authorities more prepared to tackle the virus.

In the 1995 outbreak, a hunter had gone into the woods and found a monkey carcass known locally as makaka. According to the tale passed on from one resident to another and recalled by Mabanzi, the hunter had later exhibited fever-like symptoms.

He was brought to the hospital but died. Soon after, his wife and children also died which puzzled local authorities.

By then, the hunter had come into contact with several town residents and medics. The residents soon spread the virus and the flood of victims started streaming into the local hospital.

The number of the dying soon caught international attention. Kiwkit was flooded with medical experts coming in to offer help on a strange and unknown disease that was threatening to wipe out an entire town.

Signs of the deadly infection were evident. “I had witnessed the surgical team working on an infected patient. All the medics developed illness and died except for the surgeon,” Mabanzi recalls. At that time no one realised the magnitude of the disease they were confronting.

Mabanzi had been tasked with helping analyse blood drawn from victims. He traces his infection to the death of an Italian nun who had been working with the victims who showed fever-like symptoms. Mabanzi had drawn blood from her – which brought him into direct contact with a carrier.

confirmed the worst

Even worse, the nun had caught the virus from another nun working at the same hospital. His lab tests had confirmed the worst. Both victims were infected with Ebola.

One night after a long shift, he arrived home to his family tired and worn out. He woke up the following morning feeling woozy and weak. The progression of the illness caused him concern. And the realisation that he had drawn blood from victims may have been the prognosis for the worst.

Mabanzi did not report for work because he was too weak to go. He was terrified he would infect his family – his wife and son - who watched him progressively get worse. With no option, he checked himself into the same hospital he worked and personally drew his own blood and ran the lab test. The result confirmed the worst. He was infected with Ebola.

“I was so afraid, I thought I would die. There was no cure. At that time over 315 victims had already died in Kikwit,” he recalls.

Mabanzi had to deal with the ravages of a disease that was unknown to the world and named after a river called Ebola in DRC, which presumably was the source of the disease. “I felt weak, I had a high temperature and the illness fought any medication that I took.”

It got worse. Mabanzi had a bout of diarrhoea, he vomited blood, had an respiratory infection and unstoppable hiccups. He was compelled to be under quarantine. The man who had watched victims die was now on death row.

dying patients

Being surrounded by dying patients haunted him every night.

He ran away from hospital and went home to be with his family. But running away from the hospital had consequences.

The security forces followed him home. But before confronting them, Mabanzi says he called a local pastor named Madoshe who prayed for him. It was more than a prayer; it seemed like the final rites.

Ironically, days after being forced back to the hospital, bloods tests done on him stunned everyone; he tested negative. How was that possible?

Mabanzi believes the pastor’s prayers healed him. But medical experts with knowledge of Ebola say it is possible for an infected person to turn negative after a period of time and recover through his own body fighting the disease.

Some victims have the ability to build immunity and fight the virus, but they constitute a very tiny percentage.

More tests were done on Mabanzi, which found Ebola antibodies in his blood stream.

That automatically made him a donor who could help other victims fight the disease as long his blood group matched theirs. Mabanzi is grateful for life and happier that he is now a weapon against a disease that almost took his life.