Audio By Vocalize
Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), is seen at his offices at the INRB laboratory in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on May 20, 2026. [AFP]
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.
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.
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.
