Track the thoughts of an evil mastermind as medical
From its corner of the factory, the villain can see everything. For years, it has reigned over its chrome kingdom of machinery. By now, its eyes are everywhere. Watching. Waiting.
Moving only when others move. The bottom of a boot, a trolley wheel, a scummy drain are all perfect hideouts.
The other bugs were no match.
This villain had heard the whispers that the humans were sending their best to find him. But they still shuddered at the mention of its name: Listeria monocytogenes.
Medical scientist Mimmy Ngomane nervously closed the door behind her and locked it.
There was an important job to be done.
It was 5 o’clock on a Saturday morning, February 24.
Ngomane was called in to the centre for enteric diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Edenvale, east of Johannesburg, where she had been working for the past few years.
The centre, which studies diseases affecting the gut, was deserted.
Ngomane knew its corridors well, but this time of the morning it was creepy.
“You start hearing doors open and close and wonder: Is somebody watching you?” she says.
She stole down the long corridor of the centre to one of its laboratories.
Ngomane was part of the team that had been working to track down the source of South Africa’s listeria outbreak — the biggest one the world has seen.
Scientists had been searching for the culprit for six months. But that morning was different.
Ngomane had to prepare about 100 samples for DNA extraction. The samples were from Enterprise Foods’s cold meat factory in Polokwane.
Earlier that month, stool samples from nine children who were admitted to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in January tested positive for listeria. The crèche had served the children Enterprise polony.
The incident directed the scientists’ search to Polokwane.
Between January 2017 and March 2018, listeria had claimed almost 200 lives, according to NICD reports. Close to 1 000 cases had been reported — about a quarter of those who were hospitalised had died.
Listeria can grow — and hide — almost anywhere. Dirty shoes, scummy drains and cracked floors are “a huge blind spot in hygiene at