In 1976, young Congolese doctor Jean-Jacques Muyembe was sent to a remote village to look into a mysterious illness and found himself confronting Ebola, a deadly virus the world did not yet know.<\/p>\n
Just back in the Democratic Republic of Congo after studying in Belgium, he had been called to Yambuku where doctors initially thought they were dealing with typhoid or yellow fever.<\/p>\n
He drew blood from a sick nun and sent the sample to Belgium where microbiologist Peter Piot would soon isolate the new virus, later named Ebola after a nearby river.<\/p>\n
At the time, Muyembe had little sense of the danger he had exposed himself to.<\/p>\n
“When I removed the needle, the blood kept flowing and my fingers were covered in it,” he told AFP in Kinshasa.<\/p>\n
“We had no gloves, no gowns, no masks as we do today.”<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, and now aged 84, Muyembe is still on the front line against a virus he helped uncover as the DRC battles its 17th deadly outbreak.<\/p>\n
Despite the scale of the crisis, with 808 people infected and 192 killed in the country, according to the World Health Organization, he stressed: “We have always won the battle against Ebola.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Animals to humans –<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The latest outbreak, declared on May 15, has mainly hit the remote, conflict-weary northeastern Ituri province.<\/p>\n
Causing it is the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is currently no vaccine or treatment, unlike the more common Zaire strain, against which vaccines were developed in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
But “the lack of a vaccine does not mean the battle is lost,” said Muyembe, who heads the state-run National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB).<\/p>\n
On his desk is a medal and photographs of him with dignitaries, as well as piles of letters from international partners and donors.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that the DRC had overcome 15 Ebola outbreaks in the past using public health measures alone, long before vaccines and modern treatments were available.<\/p>\n
Muyembe also said he was pleased to see African scientists, once reliant on foreign labs, play a key role in responding to outbreaks on the continent.<\/p>\n
Still, health authorities in the DRC have faced criticism this time for delays in detecting the outbreak and in supporting overstretched frontline workers.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, fearing border closures, the government has insisted that the situation is under control.<\/p>\n
Also lying on Muyembe’s desk is an open file on mpox — a reminder that Ebola is only one of several threats facing the DRC.<\/p>\n
Muyembe believes the crises are linked. The country’s exceptional biodiversity, combined with deforestation and climate change, has pushed communities deeper into the forests, and into closer contact with wildlife.<\/p>\n
It makes the DRC “particularly vulnerable to epidemics of zoonotic diseases” that pass from animals to humans, like Ebola and mpox, he said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
– ‘Greatest risk’ –<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the initial 1976 outbreak, Ebola disappeared for nearly two decades, returning in 1995 in the western city of Kikwit, where it appeared as an outbreak of “red diarrhoea”.<\/p>\n
Drawing on his experience, Muyembe experimented by treating eight patients with blood transfusions from survivors.<\/p>\n
Seven of them lived. The sample was small, but the concept laid the groundwork for a line of research that would eventually lead to the development of Ebanga, the first approved Ebola treatment, licensed in 2020.<\/p>\n
Now a father of nine and grandfather to many, Muyembe reflected on that first mission as a young graduate freshly returned to the DRC.<\/p>\n
Looking back, the virologist said he took “the greatest risk of my life” that day.<\/p>\n
“I took part in identifying the virus and in treating the disease,” the virologist said. “What more can one do in a lifetime?”<\/p>\n
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