In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, volunteers like Eyenga Bamboko are saving lives by helping people understand how to prevent mpox infection and how to get the right care if they fall ill.
Known to some in her community as ‘Mama Eyenga’, Eyenga Bamboko is one of many volunteers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are leading the fight against mpox in their local communities.
Interviewed in the Lingala language in her home city of Mbandaka, she talks about the work volunteers have been doing to protect people from infection and prevent unnecessary deaths among those who do get ill.
“My name is Eyenga Bamboko and I’m a first aider and I’ve been with the Red Cross movement for nearly two years.
Colleagues from Kinshasa came to train us as part of CP3 [Community Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness Programme] so that we could go out into the field and raise people’s awareness on mpox, even before the disease had spread. We were trained intensively on the disease before it even existed in the region.
And then mpox arrived. We observed a few cases. We reported these suspected cases to the provincial health authorities. We told them that we had observed cases as we had been trained. They took them to hospital.
But the problem was that, in the beginning, we lost a lot of people. Because many people didn’t want to believe in this illness. Some thought it was witchcraft, others said it was a curse or traditional illness.
A lot of people died because they didn’t go to hospital, they went to see the witchdoctors instead. By the time they did get to hospital, it was often too late. We found that those who went to hospital straight away were cured. But those who arrived late were the ones who succumbed to the disease.
‘I’m going to tell Mama Eyenga’
We tried to help the stronger ones recover and we started to raise awareness in the community. Now many people have started going to hospital. They come to see us to say ‘Mama Eyenga, what you said the other day [about mpox], we have seen.’ Sometimes we go and we see that it is exactly that [a suspected mpox case].
We ask people to go to hospital, telling them that they will be looked after free of charge, so that we can protect the rest of the family in the home before they too became infected. They are really starting to understand.
We’re encountering a lot of difficulties in the field. Many people still don’t want to believe in this disease. And you can see that a lot of hospitals are overwhelmed at the moment. But we’re not going to stop raising awareness.
In my own home, I’ve seen a real change. Especially when it comes to hand washing. When my grandchildren want to play or eat they make their brothers and sisters aware and they say ‘if you don’t wash your hands, I’m going to tell Mama Eyenga’. Even at school, they also raise awareness among their friends and classmates.
At first, my husband and children didn’t agree with me volunteering. They thought I worked too much and there’s a risk of me getting sick. But now they don’t ask any more questions because they’ve understood that I am helping the community.”
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).