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My Ebola story: Nampenjja witnessed 15 succumb to disease
Ms Annet Nampijja at her retail shop in Ngabano Village, Madudu Sub-county in Mubende District. PHOTO/DAN WANDERA
What you need to know:
On January 11, the government declared an end to the Ebola virus outbreak that had emerged four months earlier and claimed 55 lives. In this 13th installment of our series, Ms Annet Nampenjja, the first patient to be admitted to the Ebola Treatment Unit at Mubende General Hospital, recounts her experience.
The battle with Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), especially in the patient ward, was a challenging life experience for Ms Annet Nampenjja.
Ms Nampenjja, a resident of Ngabano village in Madudu Sub-county, was the first patient to be admitted to the Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) at Mubende General Hospital when the disease outbreak was declared on September 20, 2022, in the district.
She had been admitted to the general patient ward at Mubende Hospital but she became the first patient to be transferred to the Ebola isolation facility after the tests confirmed that she was positive for Ebola.
While most Ebola recovery cases at the treatment unit were discharged with two to three weeks, Ms Nampenjja spent five weeks at the facility.
Ms Nampenjja, like several others, has one common likely facility where she believes she came into contact with the disease.
She had earlier nursed her three-year-old son at St Florence Clinic in Ngabano Village, Madudu Sub-county in Mubende District.
“The child had severe malaria when we rushed her to the clinic. Three days after we got discharged, the three-year-old was back at the clinic. This time, the boy was vomiting and had diarrhoea,” she narrates.
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The clinic referred the child to Mubende Hospital on September 8, 2022. After three days of nursing her child at the patient ward, Ms Nampenjja felt weak and got admitted herself. She felt cold and was vomiting. She thought that she had contracted malaria but she wasn’t getting better.
Ms Nampenjja, like several other survivors, believes that her possible area of contact was St Florence Medical Centre.
During admission to Mubende hospital, Nampenjja also experienced nightmares at night that often forced her to jump off the bed and hide under it. It felt like some machete-wielding men were chasing her and were after her life.
“The dreams were very scary. When you see somebody chasing you with a panga with the intention of taking away your life, you run and hide away from the enemy. The frightening dreams appeared in different forms. I imagined that somebody was taking away my life and nobody was coming to my rescue,” she says.
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But Ms Nampenjja is quick to reveal that witnessing several of the patients struggle in the last hour of their respective lives was even more frightening.
“Because I was the first in the Ebola treatment unit ward, I witnessed many patients lose the battle to the Ebola disease. I saw more than 15 people die. It was very frightening to see a patient lose control, undress and run around the patient ward. It was madness at the ward,” she reveals.
Ms Nampenjja recalls that she took quite a long time in the ward. She and her son ended up being joined by two other family members in the ward. One of them, was her 12-year-old step-daughter who succumbed to the disease at the ward.
By the time the 12-year-old was admitted to the ward, Ms Nampenjja was very ill. She only remembers the medical team carrying her away.
“I saw the medical teams lift the girl who seemed lifeless, from her bed. Her body got wrapped in a body bag and taken away. I felt the pain that a family member had died but at the same time, I was too weak to even speak. But at least I was able to recognise what was happening,” she explains.
Her husband, Ismail Kavuma, was later brought in four days after they lost the 12-year-old child.
The family now had three patients at the Ebola patient ward.
“I had been at the Ebola ward for two weeks but had no signs of improvement. This perhaps explains why my husband, the three-year-old child and another family member [an older step-daughter] got discharged earlier. But we had been in the same ward fighting for life,” she says.
Ms Nampenjja, who eventually recovered and is now back at home in Ngabano Village at her retail shop, says Ebola brought a big setback to her family. They lost one member of the family and registered four recovery cases.
She is quick to thank the medical team at the ETU at Mubende hospital and all the emergency teams for the love and care that facilitated their recovery. “Dr Pasker Apiyo and her team were our parents. We had no caregivers but the team did every job that a caregiver was supposed to do at the ward. They could bring us the food, remind us about drinking juice and eating the fruits. The hospital supplied all these items,” Ms Nampenjja says.
Looking back
January 11 marked 113 days since the start of the epidemic in Uganda. Under the WHO’s criteria, an outbreak of the disease officially ends when there are no new cases for 42 consecutive days -- twice the virus’s incubation period. WHO said in total there had been 142 confirmed cases, 55 confirmed deaths and 87 recovered patients, with children among the victims.
