Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. <\/a><\/p>\nThen he got a WhatsApp message: Ebola was here.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the mysterious illness sweeping the hospital he worked at in Bunia made sense. And his health risk became clear.<\/p>\n
Now surrounded in a plastic bubble sheathed in protective gear in Prague and asymptomatic as of Monday, the internist and pediatrician said in a Zoom interview that he\u2019s grateful for the care he\u2019s received. LaRochelle, who was evacuated once before for an Ebola exposure in 2018, added that he\u2019s aware many of his colleagues are working without sufficient safeguards.<\/p>\n
LaRochelle\u2019s comments, the first he\u2019s made to a reporter since his evacuation, come as medical and aid workers in Congo are struggling to respond to an Ebola outbreak that is already linked to over 1,000 cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two times, perhaps, that I\u2019ve been most proud to be an American in the last 10 years have been when I\u2019ve been evacuated,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat hurts is knowing that that is not available to the vast majority of people, and certainly not to my friends in Congo.\u201d<\/p>\n
While LaRochelle\u2019s former colleagues scramble for gloves, multiple hospital staffers clad in protective gear check regularly on him. He speaks via WhatsApp and videoconferencing with his fellow physician missionary, Peter Stafford, who is \u201cdoing a lot better\u201d in Berlin after testing positive for Ebola this month. Stafford, his family and LaRochelle all received experimental monoclonal antibodies to reduce their chance of death, given the strain\u2019s high fatality rate.<\/p>\n
Twice a day, LaRochelle talks to his wife and three children, who are safely back in the U.S.<\/p>\n
In the middle of his interview with The Post, LaRochelle learned that a Congolese doctor whom he referred to only as Dr. Blaise had died, presumably of Ebola.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou feel helpless a lot of the time,\u201d he said, but added, \u201cWatching my colleagues there, you see this amazing mix of fear and courage and hopelessness and beauty and ugliness.\u201d<\/p>\n
If given the chance, LaRochelle said he\u2019d like to go back. He knows, however, this outbreak could be protracted.<\/p>\n
The 46-year-old Christian missionary was working for Serge Global Inc., the missionary nonprofit, alongside his wife, Anna, who is a nurse practitioner. They are parents to three children ages 6 to 14 and have worked to spread medical ministry for over a decade.<\/p>\n
He is called to heal as Jesus healed, he said, and show people God loves them, \u201cSo that they would know that God has not forgotten them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April, his wife had been evacuated to Kenya for a respiratory issue.<\/p>\n
When the family returned at the end of April after she recovered, LaRochelle treated two middle-age sisters at the hospital he worked at in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in northeast Congo. At the time, they seemed to have strange symptoms – diarrhea, shock, low blood sugar or breathing problems. But one of them also had recently been diagnosed with HIV, and LaRochelle did not recognize the symptoms as obvious signs of Ebola. Both of them died.<\/p>\n
LaRochelle said he couldn\u2019t remember whether he was wearing a mask while trying to resuscitate one of them, noting that doctoring at Centre Medical Evangelique (CME) Bunia Hospital is vastly different from in the United States. Gloves and soap are in short supply, and typical disinfecting practices like washing hands is not always practical.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re too rigid on those things, you just can\u2019t function in Congo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His next exposure happened when he was wearing one glove and drawing blood from a boy with a fever on May 11. LaRochelle later discovered the child had been bleeding from his lower intestines and not properly isolated by the hospital. The boy, like the two women LaRochelle treated before, died.<\/p>\n
All three patients were from Mongbwalu, now considered the heart of the outbreak. While his hospital staff had tested for the disease, the results came back negative since they tested for the wrong strain, not the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus now circulating.<\/p>\n
Once LaRochelle got the WhatsApp message, it all made sense.<\/p>\n
In the scramble that followed, as he navigated a slew of logistical details related to his evacuation and isolation procedure, intrusive thoughts about the possibility of getting sick would break in intermittently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow, I don\u2019t want to miss this conversation, this could be the last time I see them if I get sick,\u201d he recalled thinking about his wife and three children.<\/p>\n
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared his family to return to the U.S. on a commercial flight while LaRochelle waited to evacuate.<\/p>\n
LaRochelle says he imagines people have a hard time understanding how he could return to working in Congo after his first brush with Ebola in 2018.<\/p>\n
But he said that he and his wife consider this work a calling. They also see it as a chance for their children to experience living abroad, playing soccer in the yard and learning a new language, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of our son having a smartphone at a young age, and what that could lead to, it almost, it feels riskier than a lot of what we\u2019re doing in Congo,\u201d LaRochelle said, noting that like most major cities, parts of the area are safe, and others are not.<\/p>\n
But much of the region is dominated by violent political unrest by rival militant groups, and the physician corps has been devastated by doctors either fleeing or being killed.<\/p>\n
Funerals are constant: He noted that he has Congolese friends who lost a child who fell in a latrine pit, along with others who have lost children due to malaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of death in Congo, it\u2019s stunning,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is part of the reality of Congo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff at the hospital LaRochelle works at have now been falling ill, filling the very beds they used to attend to. At least one had started bleeding, LaRochelle said.<\/p>\n
The hospital is overrun, with many patients crammed next to each other. Several health workers have been threatened by the family members of patients, who don\u2019t believe that their relatives could have Ebola.<\/p>\n
Isolation tents set up by aid groups and health workers in the country have been burned.<\/p>\n
For now, LaRochelle waits, and tells his colleagues he\u2019s praying for them.<\/p>\n
Serge\u2019s executive director, Matt Allison, who joined the Zoom interview with LaRochelle, said of the situation in Congo, \u201cDeath is a closer reality than we can really imagine as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their Congolese colleague\u2019s death this week is a \u201cheartbreaking, but really clear example of the different worlds that we live in, and we see part of our job trying to connect those two worlds into closer proximity with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaRochelle\u2019s trip out of Congo involved a specially equipped bubble stretcher and attendants in full protective gear.<\/p>\n
Before he was able to evacuate, he helped to make sure Stafford safely made it into an ambulance, monitoring him from six feet away. Before they left each other, Stafford had shared a Bible verse, Psalm 56, that LaRochelle summarized as \u201cWhen I am afraid, I trust in you.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaRochelle had watched Stafford deteriorate, from suffering body aches to not being able to walk on his own without help and experiencing some confusion.<\/p>\n
After Stafford left for Germany, LaRochelle\u2019s focus turned to figuring out the logistics of how he could leave, along with travel plans for Stafford\u2019s wife, Rebekah, who had also been exposed through her work as a physician, and their four children.<\/p>\n
The six of them took a flight to Entebbe, Uganda, where they separated onto special medical flights for their respective trips. LaRochelle headed to Bulovka Hospital in Prague.<\/p>\n
The last time LaRochelle was exposed and evacuated, he went to Nebraska, which currently is housing patients from the hantavirus outbreak connected to a cruise ship.<\/p>\n
The Post previously reported the White House had resisted Stafford\u2019s returning to the U.S. for care. President Donald Trump has historically objected to allowing people exposed to Ebola in the country, and federal officials have recently restricted green-card holders who have visited Ebola-afflicted countries from returning to the U.S.<\/p>\n
For LaRochelle, he was initially unclear where he would be headed but was grateful for the care. While on the plane from Uganda to Prague, which stopped to refuel in Crete, he tried to watch the Star Wars show \u201cThe Mandalorian.\u201d But it was too hard to for him to hear the show amid the noise of the fans sucking air out of his part of the plane.<\/p>\n
After disembarking, he was laid on a stretcher that was encased in protective plastic bubble casing, which was then washed, like going through a car wash, to decontaminate it. LaRochelle said he wished he could have pulled out his phone to take pictures, but it was inside the protective clothing he was wearing.<\/p>\n
He described his room at Bulovka Hospital as a PVC plastic structure that has some special features, including a spot for arms with gloves that are right over his bed in case he needs medical care.<\/p>\n
He said he spends most of the time on the phone or video calls, talking to his family, the Staffords and his former colleagues in Congo. He\u2019s in touch with staff at the hospital, trying to coordinate labs, check in on colleagues and see how he can contribute from afar.<\/p>\n
LaRochelle said he\u2019s aware Stafford also thought he would be fine before feeling ill around the same time LaRochelle is now in the incubation period. But he added that he has been exposed before, and did not fall ill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m optimistic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the name of a Congolese doctor referred to only as Dr. Blaise was misspelled as Baise, based on information from the nonprofit group Serge Global Inc.<\/p>\n
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