His most popular music video, Life in Quarantine, has amassed more than 280,000 hits on his YouTube channel and several hundred thousand more on CollegeHumor.com. More than 6000 people have signed up to be van Vuuren's fans on Facebook, while close to 2000 follow him on Twitter. "The only ways I'd use the internet when I came in here was for email and whereis.com and finding out where I have to go, what I have to do, but now as a result of being in here in quarantine and [physically] separated from the rest of the world, I ... am more accessible and in touch with the world than I ever have been before," he said in a phone interview. He now gets a constant stream of supportive messages from people all over the world, and some fans have been so caught up in his "Fully Sick Rapper" alter-ego that they send him photos of themselves acting out scenes from his videos. "It's made my time in here so much easier because the thing I was most worried about with this is I could potentially waste months of my life and I'm glad that that hasn't been the case," he said.

He says he only started making the videos to pass the time in hospital and keep in touch with his mates on the outside. But he had to upload his first clip, I'm not sick, but I'm sick sick, to YouTube because it was too difficult to send it around on email. "In that first video you can just see how bored I am - I'm dancing around with my hospital gown as a cape, stomping around the room," he said. The clip began racking up thousands of hits within days. "I've had girls offer to send me naked photos of themselves to keep me company in hospital ... people have sent me messages on the chat lines telling me that they're touching themselves and they'd love to just be in here and keep me company and that they'd be more than happy to wear a mask if they can stay in the same bed as me," he said. But beneath his newfound celebrity, van Vuuren is battling serious issues.

The outdoor advertising sales rep was rushed to hospital on December 9 after continuously coughing up blood during a work meeting. He knew immediately that his condition was serious. "I thought, I've seen this in the movies before and it's only when someone's taken a bullet in the stomach or an arrow in the back or something," he said. After detecting a hole in his right lung the size of a 50-cent piece, doctors identified the disease as tuberculosis, suspecting he contracted it during his travels to South Africa or South America. He was released from hospital on January 1 but within weeks was called back in after doctors realised he was infected with a strain of the disease that was resistant to many drugs used to treat it - a rarity in the developed world. He has remained in hospital ever since and doctors are unable to tell him when he will be released.

Loading In the meantime, he plans to continue churning out his YouTube raps. He has also begun selling T-shirts online, promising all proceeds will go towards the World Health Organisation's fight against TB. "I've got to stay in here as long as it takes to get a clean result from the tests ... I could be out of here in three weeks, I could be out of here in six weeks, I could be out of here in six months," he said.