Entrevista a Valter Muendane: “Yo ya soy un ganador. He sobrevivido al noma, una enfermedad que mata en poco tiempo” – Blog
Noma is a gangrenous disease that quickly disfigures the face. It kills 90% of those affected, who are usually children of very poor environments.
She is «the forgotten of the forgotten,» says Marta Ribes, a predoctoral researcher of Islobal who together together with Carlos Chaccour Study the coolness of the Noma in Mozambique. Until December 2023, it didn’t even appear in the List of tropical diseases unattended of the World Health Organization, and without knowing its exact cause, although it is believed that it could death to a disability in oral bacteria. What is known that favors it: Extreme poverty, malnutrition, poor oral hygiene and a weakened immune system. They are all previous factors, in addition to cooling can be treated in the early stages with antibiotics. Therefore it is heartbreaking to know that Noma kills 90% of the people it affects, mostly boys and girls. Those who manage to survive, do it with a disfigured face and with physical and psychological seculos for life.
Valter Muendane, a 23 -year -old Mozambiqueño, was one of these children who survived the Noma. He was lucky, but also went on to live stigmatized. If someone had told him then, when he did not want to leave his home in Maputo, that one day he would rebuild his face, he would study nursing, he would marry, he would talk a son and travel to Basel to participate to participate A Symposium on NomaI would not have believed it.
We find him at his mouth of the symposium, passing through Barcelona. He is accompaniedElysium), As well as Marta Ribes and a small filming eúpeo captain by Fabrice Catérini and Claire Jeantet. After his documentary «Restoring dignity«They are filming another on the effects of the Noma throughout the life of the survivors.
1. Valter Muendane holding a photo of when he was little, shortly after suffering the acute phase of the Noma. 2. Valter poses pride showing his nursing title. 3. A health professional in Zambezia (Mozambique) next to an informative poster about the Noma. Photos: Marta Ribes.
-What is the name?
-It is cooling that begins as gingivitis and evolves to a gangrene that destroys the skin of the ara, bones and tissues.
-How did you live it?
-All began with a slight headache, and in the face. I was nine or ten years old. My mother fell a hospital for a little girl from Maputo, where they gave me a medicine. The next day, already at home, I worse. I began to swell my face and there came a time when I had problems breathing: I had put the part that goes from the lip to my nose and around my nose. My mother fell a hospital at once
-Did I know at the moment that it was not hill?
-No. They found me malnourished and related to me malnutrition. I was able to return home, although I had to heal every day in a small hospital near my house. He had an opening in the nose and another between the nose and lip, so great that the inside of the mouth could be seen.
Years of isolamient
-Wowness no longer continues to progress?
-No, but the injuries had to be treated. Wash them daily and cover them with gauze. They gave my mother material and explained how to do it. I had to whistle the gauze for three or four years.
-The cooling changed your life.
-Yeah. Before cooling he was a child who jumped and played football with children. After the Noma I couldn’t get out of the house. My family encouraged me to go out but was not able to do it, if they left they looked at me and made fun of me. There was a time when I returned to school, but without interacting with Nieie, as soon as the classes return directly home and did not go out. Cooling changed me completely.
The new face in the mirror is you
-Plastic surgery returned your character and your illusions?
-Yeah. That came after four years. Hospital doctors said I couldn’t rebuild my nose in Mozambique. Then an associature launched a fundraising campaign so that they could zaar me outside the country. An English lady paid me a trip to Portugal, and there they expressed me, although they told me that I had to surpassed two years for surgery. Back to Mozambique, the association of the associations that operated in Ethiopia and, after analyzing my medical exams, they said that I could go to go to go, there was no need to wait. The associature raised money and I could travel to Ethiopia.
-How was it to see you in the mirror after the first operation?
-A not very difficult, because I saw another Vastter, I had changed my face. But the second operation improved the result, and I was also getting used to my new face, I was telling that I was better than before. A starting from there I started leaving home, talking against people, dream! The dream of becoming a nurse emerged, I wanted to return what I had received. I looked like someone who could do anything: I could dream and could make any dream. I dreamed of being a nurse, I studied and got it. I could also get married and now I have a three -month -old wife and son. Surgery changed my life.
I am already winner
-What do you dream now?
-My target mayor is to get a job as a nurse, wherever, in Africa or in Europe, to help other people, and help my son. I don’t want it to be malnourished and the same thing can happen to me. I want to have a emp which can give it a good diet, I provide a better life than the one I had. In addition, in Mozambique I met Marta Ribes, from Isglobal, who told me about Elysium, associative to which I joined. The goal of Elysium is aligned with what I feel is also my life goal: I help a noma survivors.
-How do you help you? What do you tell them?
-I tell you my histia. And that I managed to overcome the difficulties looking at me and telling me that I had to raise the phase in which I was in time and procure continuing to dream. Because the only thing that differentiates us and me is that I am a survivor of Noma. But, otherwise, we are the same essential. I can continue living, soy, help other people and other survivors. Life continues. I am already a winner, he overwhelmed a disease that usually kills people in a short time. So, if he managed to get here, I can continue fighting and dreaming.
Put in my place, be in my place!
-Do you remember what you felt when you first met another Noma survivor?
-Yes, it gave me strength to see that there is an elder that I could afford to send me. I didn’t have to get in my place because I was already in my place!
-What has been the hardest thing to have had the name?
-Ho when he manifested. That destitution, gangrena. But also the seculos. At that time my head was spinning, all the dreams were blocked. I still didn’t know that there are surgery solution. I looked at myself, sin nose, and I did not conceive to continue dreaming. I felt that was the end.
-D What time did I supply what I had had was the name?
-In Portugal, after medical exams. They told me that what I had caused the destruction of my Ara had been the Noma. But he was still small and does not send much curiosity about cooling. When I grow up, I was investigating a little more.
-It wants a lot of research to do, it is very unknown cooling. Why is it necessary for survivors to participate in it?
-Because we can tell in the first person what we happen and what others are happening. UN Survivor of Noma passes through many stadiums, since cooling appears until it recovers from surgeries and inclusion later. It is difficult to deal with all this because one is not born with Noma. For example, I am now a nurse, Hards knowledge, but in certain work interviews, seeing me, they think I will not be able to perform my work. I would like you to see me as a normal person, who has the same capacities as the others.
