*** g96 5/8 p. 23 Killer Virus Strikes Zaire *** [Awake! magazine, May 8, 1996]
BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN AFRICA
KIKWIT, Zaire, is a sprawling town on the fringe of a tropical rain forest. Forty-two-year-old Gaspard Menga Kitambala, who lived outside the city, was the only Witness of Jehovah in his family. Menga was a seller of charcoal. He prepared his charcoal deep in the forest, bundled it up, and carried it on his head to Kikwit.
On January 6, 1995, he felt ill. He fell twice on his way home from the forest. When he reached his home, he said that he had a headache and a fever.
Over the next few days, his condition deteriorated. On January 12, his family took him to Kikwit General Hospital. The Witnesses in Menga’s congregation helped the family to care for him at the hospital. Sadly, his condition worsened. He began to vomit blood. Blood flowed uncontrollably from his nose and ears. On January 15, he died.
Soon others in Menga’s family who had touched his body became sick. By early March, 12 people closely related to Menga had died, including his wife and two of their six children.
By mid-April, hospital staff and others began to sicken and die in a way similar to Menga and his family. Quickly the illness spread to two other towns in the region. Clearly, outside help was needed.
Professor Muyembe, Zaire’s top virologist, went to Kikwit on May 1. He later told Awake!: “We concluded that Kikwit was suffering from two epidemics: one was diarrhea caused by bacteria, and the other was a severe hemorrhagic fever caused by a virus. Of course, we needed to confirm this diagnosis. So we collected some blood from patients and sent it to be tested at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, U.S.A.”
The CDC confirmed what Muyembe and other doctors in Zaire had already suspected. The disease was Ebola.
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SEE ALSO: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/5860
Effort Mugabe, in Harare, Zimbabwe, Aug. 13, 2014. (Sebastian Mhofu)
