virus and later died from the disease herself is being hailed as a hero for helping stop the outbreak.
Dr. Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, a
doctor at First Consultant Hospital, oversaw treatment of Patrick
Sawyer, Nigeria's Ebola patient zero, when he arrived sick in Lagos,
Nigeria's former capital and Africa's largest city, on a flight from
Liberia in July.
Adadevoh
fought to isolate Sawyer, a top official in the Liberian Ministry of
Finance who did not take kindly to isolation and lied about his
symptoms, officials said.
"Immediately, he was very aggressive," Dr. Benjamin Ohiaeri, the hospital's director, told the BBC.
"He was more intent on leaving the hospital than anything else. He was
screaming. He pulled his intravenous [tubes] and spilled the blood
everywhere."
Adadevoh, the Telegraph writes,
"effectively saved the country from disaster by spotting that its first
Ebola patient was lying about his condition, and then stopped him
leaving her clinic."
Sawyer,
who had been caring for his Ebola-stricken sister, was reportedly set on
visiting one of Nigeria's Pentecostal churches "in search of a cure
from one of the so-called miracle pastors," the BBC said.
"The Liberian ambassador started
calling Dr. Adadevoh, putting pressure on her and the institution,"
Ohiaeri said. "He felt we were kidnapping the gentleman and said it was a
denial of his fundamental rights and we could face further actions. ...
The only way we could be sure and live up to our responsibility to our
people, the state and nation — this is all about patriotism at the end
of the day — was to keep him here."
Sawyer,
40, collapsed in Lagos on July 20 after getting off a plane from
Liberia. He died just five days later. Adadevo and 11 colleagues were
infected with Ebola.
"She was fine all along and then suddenly it became apparent," Adadevoh's son Bankole Cardoso told the news service.
She died on Aug. 19.
"We
lost some of our best staff," Ohiaeri said. "Dr. Adadevoh had been
working with us for 21 years and was perhaps one of the most brilliant
physicians. I worked with her. I know that she was sheer genius."
Thanks to patient isolation and
aggressive contact tracing (including 18,500 visits to 894 people),
Nigeria had just 20 Ebola cases, including eight deaths — a far lower
death rate than the 70 percent seen elsewhere.
Cardoso,
still mourning the loss of his mother, says it's become "more and more
apparent exactly what she had done" in identifying Sawyer as patient
zero.
"It really helped
Nigeria to prepare and get ready to trace everybody," Cardoso said. "And
I think that's the difference between us and our West African
neighbors — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone."
Rui
Gama Vaz, WHO director for Nigeria, called the containment of Ebola in
the most populous country in Africa a "spectacular success story."
"But
we must be clear that we only won a battle," Vaz added. "The war will
only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola."
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