⁍ Esperance Nyabintu caught Ebola a year ago, the virus killed her husband.

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⁍ Most of her neighbours, friends and family abandoned her.

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⁍ But she has become a social worker, supporting other ostracised survivors.

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– When Ebola hit Esperance Nyabintu, her husband died and most of her neighbors, friends, and family abandoned her. But now, a year after she contracted the virus, Nyabintu is raising 10 children alone in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “It makes me useful. I tell myself that it is God who chose me,” she tells Reuters. “I feel really good when I meet an (Ebola survivor) and give them moral support. I got sick and now I’m an ambassador of healing.” Nyabintu is one of thousands of survivors who have emerged from the two-year outbreak that killed more than 2,200 people in the Congo, but survivors like her are still ostracized. “When the neighbors heard about Ebola, everyone hid,” says one neighbor. “I ask people to think of Ebola as any disease, and tell them that Esperance has healed.”