Malady wrongly called 'Apollo 11 disease' caught eye of engineer in Nigeria

Nine years after an iconic launch and thousands of miles from Florida's Space Coast, a young engineer working on a pipeline in Africa met Nigerians with runny eyes and what they claimed was "Apollo 11 disease."

In reality, the eye-watering malady the West African natives were dealing with — acute hemorhaghic conjunctivitis, or AHC — had no connection to the famed mission.

But an outbreak in Ghana in 1969 coincided with the timing of the moon landing and suspicion spread, just as the disease spread for the next three years across western and central Africa to the Middle East.

It's still called "Apollo" in that part of the world and is a severe, contagious form of what's commonly called pink eye.

And its effect on villagers definitely caught the attention of Richard "Dick" Beal.

At 38, he packed his bags and hauled his family halfway across the world to work for a Shell Oil contracting company, J. Ray McDermott, in a small Nigerian village, Warri.

"I was utterly motivated by pay and adventure," said Beal, a Florida Technological University (now University of Central Florida) grad who had worked at Cape Canaveral as crew for the Matador launch. 

"I went to Nigeria mainly because the project was so far behind schedule. The logistics were just terrible before I got there."

Although he was part of  "a dynamic and diverse workforce" consisting of fellow Americans, Australasian, Brits and more, the majority of workers — about 1,500 Nigerians — came from local villages. Those locals were hired for jobs including cooks, barge clerks, tugboat captains and security.

Beal can share memories of tugboat captains being held for ransom by local villagers, as well as those of the occasional crocodile run-in on the Nigerian river delta.

However, more common during his time in sub-Saharan Africa was the sight of local Nigerian employees showing up with pus overflowing from their red, swollen-shut eyes, as the Ni claimed they were suffering from Apollo 11 disease.

Medics and Beal regularly gave out eye ointment to those who contracted the strain, which typically runs its course in a week or so.

About a year into the pipeline project, chatter started about the Nigerian government blaming the U.S. astronauts for causing the hideous eye condition. Rumors floated around the village, Beal said, that the Nigerian government went as far as trying to seek compensation from the U.S. for the alleged suffering.

Some researchers say the rumors could have started because those affected, in remote locations, thought the dust was kicked up by the moon mission.

Given the July launch, that could explain how the misnomer took life. Cases of AHC would soar from early July to late September, Beal recalled. That's when summer winds called "Harmattan" swept dust from the Sahara across the continent.

Beal said he and others were constantly flicking grains of sand off their shoulders, or brushing a fine, dust-like substance off their collars. In combination with poor sanitation in their living quarters — an ideal combination for bacteria breeding grounds — the Nigerian workers would then contract the eye disease. 

"The Nigerians were more prone to the conjunctivitis than Americans," said Beal.

"The Americans I was working with got much worse diseases than that. Malaria was a big problem and so were typhus and typhoid."

There was little to no medical expertise available in these villages. 

From a medical perspective, many doctors and professionals, including Dr. Eric Grieser, director of the University of Florida Eye Center, confirm there's no correlation between astronauts walking on the moon and the rise of acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis in African countries.

"It was simply coincidental timing — there is a 0% likelihood that there is a connection between the two events," said Grieser. 

This rare strand of a common disease stems from two viruses, enterovirus 70 and coxsackievirus A24, which cause blood vessels to leak and goop to form in the eyes, as well as other symptoms. According to Grieser, the disease is very common in African countries and outbreaks have been reported in many other places, including the United States, Cuba, Canada, China and Japan.

"There is still no vaccine for the form of conjunctivitis, but it is not typically harmful. It just looks really ugly," said Grieser. 

By 1980, when the pipeline was finished, Beal and his family were lucky and had a clean bill of health, he said. 

No typhoid, no typhus — not even pinkeye. Even today, however, the ailment persists, complete with its link to Apollo 11: A 2016 story from The News Agency of Nigeria explains the infection "known as ‘conjunctivitis' in medical parlance and ‘apollo’ in local parlance."

Contact Olivia Mckelvey at omckelvey@floridatoday.com and 321-242-3613. Twitter: @olivia_mckelvey

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