Dennis Akagha lost his fiancee to the deadly Ebola Virus Disease and also tested positive to the disease but survived.
In this interview with Punch, he talks about how his strong Christian faith, helped him to overcome the dreaded disease.
Excerpts:
- You’ve been certified to be Ebola Virus negative, for how long has that been?
It’s going to two weeks now. Saturday (today) will make it two weeks exactly that I’ve been certified negative. I’ve not had any of the symptoms since then. But I’m granting this interview basically for one reason; before I was quarantined, I saw it in the Bible that I would not die but live to testify the goodness of God upon my life. When God saved me, it is my responsibility to tell the whole world and Nigerians that God is still in the business of doing miracles. So I’m a living testimony of the goodness of God.
- You said before you were quarantined, that means at that point, you knew you had Ebola Virus
Yes. But it was not that I was tested positive to it but I had started seeing the symptoms; I had started feeling feverish and having pains all over my body, my muscles, my waist. I was described as being symptomatic at the time. The symptoms came up for like three days. My temperature rose.
I will always tell the whole world that it’s a miracle because I met people who were at the isolation centre before me and I left the place before them. I stayed there for five days. It was a miracle. What worked for me was my faith and my belief because right from the day I saw the symptoms, I had been talking to myself. I found it in the Bible that the power of life and death is in my tongue which means anything I speak happens for me. At that point in time, I started speaking to my body, my blood system and doing the things you will ordinarily not understand. These are the things we call mysteries.
- Would you like to share some of these mysteries?
I can share them but some people may not believe them. In the church where I worship, we believe in holy communion and feet washing. The Bible says that the life of the body is in the blood and I also found where Jesus was telling his disciples, if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have life abundantly and not die. With this understanding, I started taking the blood of Jesus and eating the flesh three times in a day. I started doing feet washing. These are the mysteries and they are the things that helped deliver me from the bondage of sickness. I got the bread from my church and I was blessing my water to do feet washing.
- You were there for five days, what was your experience like within that period?
I was taken in on Tuesday, August 19, 2014 and left there on Saturday night, August 23, 2014. The experience wasn’t funny, anyway. I really want to appreciate Lagos State. The state has done the best out of all the places where Ebola has been ravaging lives. Initially, there were no volunteers and the facilities were not there but it was because the virus came unexpectedly. Nobody expected it. But within a short time, the facilities improved, so the state tried.
The first day I got there, I was just telling myself that I was not Ebola positive. When I got there, they took my blood samples and the results came out the following day. Then, I was kept in a ward meant for suspects. We had two wards: one is a ward for persons suspected to have the virus and the other was for persons confirmed to already have it. So once you are confirmed to have it, they will take you away from the ‘suspects’ ward’ to the other ward.
When I was confirmed to have it, they took me to the ‘confirmed’ ward. I went in with them and I met others there. Immediately I lay down on my bed, I cried but nobody knew I was shedding tears. I just lay there and cried. I was crying to God because I already told him that I would not die but live. It took me five minutes to shed the tears and afterwards, I wiped my tears. One of the doctors came in to tell me that my results were not clear to them. She said the results were bulky; that was the language she used and that they could not understand it. In other words, I wasn’t meant to be there.
So they took me back to the ‘suspects’ ward and said they would rerun the tests. That was on Wednesday.
They reran the tests and the results came out on Thursday afternoon. It was positive. So they asked me to go back to the ‘confirmed’ ward. I told them I was not sick. They said that I was positive but I insisted that I didn’t have Ebola. We quarreled for sometime so it took me time to go back to the ‘confirmed’ ward. It was after much pleading and also because they said I was a risk to others in the ‘suspects’ ward. So I went back to the ‘confirmed’ ward but I was still saying I was not sick. I was still taking my holy communion and doing feet washing and praying. I slept thereon Thursday night and then they came again to take my blood samples.
I was there on Friday too. I was doing my regular exercise- press up and everything. Then on Saturday night, they called me that I had been discharged. I had even forgotten that my blood samples were taken for a test. They said my results came out negative. In that case, I didn’t have any business there anymore.
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