CEPI Dr Jean-Jacques Muyembe was a newly-qualified microbiologist working as a field epidemiologist when he got a call in 1976 to help investigate an outbreak. A pernicious disease had taken hold in the village of Yambuku in central Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. People were dying in large numbers of the infection – one that appeared at first to be like malaria or typhoid or yellow fever, but was clearly something even worse.
Muyembe knew that some of the Belgian nuns working in the village had been vaccinated against yellow fever and typhoid, yet this infection was easily flooring those defences. It was a swift and gruesome new killer.
Reflecting on his experience with these first few patients, Muyembe said the most striking thing was when he drew blood from them. Removing the syringe and needle, he found that the tiny puncture hole would continue to gush blood. It was the first time he’d seen such a thing, he recalled, and he knew it was an ominous sign.
After asking one of the infected nuns to fly back with him to Kinshasa, Muyembe took blood samples from her and sent them to Belgium for testing. The analysis that followed produced a shocking result. The blood of the nun, who by now had been killed by the disease, was infected with a virus that caused an acute haemorrhagic fever – one that scientists now describe as “one of the most lethal infections you can think of”.