Hantavirus survivor and father-of-two opens up about near-death experience
"They had me upside down in the hospital bed," Christian Ege told LBC after contracting the virus, which led to "sepsis and kidney failure in intensive care"
A father-of-two who survived a life-threatening bout of hantavirus has opened up about how the disease changed his life.
Listen to this article
Speaking exclusively with LBC, Christian Ege, from Stuttgart, Germany, said he experienced ‘flu-like’ symptoms after his five-year-old showed him a dead rat in their garden.
Within days, he was admitted to intensive care and fitted with a neck catheter to begin dialysis.
“It’s comparable to an accident,” Christian said, when asked how his illness changed his life. “There’s a time before the accident, and a time after.”
Christian decided to share his experience after an outbreak of hantavirus on the HV Mondius cruise ship, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) is battling to contain.
Three people have died since the outbreak, two of whom tested positive for hantavirus.
Read more: Twenty-two rat virus cruise passengers isolating in Merseyside hospital set to return home
Read more: French woman critically ill with hantavirus as WHO warns 'more cases are possible'
Twenty British nationals have begun a 45-day period of self-isolation following their evacuation from the ship.
Christian started experiencing symptoms in May 2019, for which he received medication from his family doctor.
Two days later, however, Christian began vomiting and experiencing dizziness. Clinicians carried out a blood test, which showed his kidney function had plummeted.
“I had to go to hospital immediately [and] after I arrived, I collapsed,” Christian recalled.
“Soon I found myself with sepsis and kidney failure in intensive care.”
“They had me upside down in the hospital bed - they tried to insert a neck catheter to establish dialysis.”
Two days into his stay in hospital, doctors discovered he was suffering from a strain of hantavirus, with traces of the disease later discovered in his garden.
He spent almost three weeks in hospital, and took four months to make a full recovery from his illness.
Hantaviruses are typically carried by rodents and transmitted through their urine and droppings.
Human transmission is only known with particular variants, such as the Andes strain, which the WHO believes that some of the ship’s passengers caught in South America.
There are more than 20 strains of the disease, which derives its name from a South Korean river. Christian contracted a different strain to that which is the source of the current outbreak.
Later today, twenty-two people, including the 20 Brits, a German national and a Japanese national will leave Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, where they have been self-isolating. They will be allowed to complete the remainder of their 45-day quarantine at home.
Professor Robin May, the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) chief scientific officer, said patients at Arrowe Park were “healthy and asymptomatic”.
Mortality rates for hantaviruses can be as high as 40%, but the UKHSA, which monitors the threats of infectious diseases, says that the chance of it spreading to the wider public is “very low”.