To Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh and Other Ebola Victims in Nigeria

Thursday, August 15, 2014

She has become, for me, the face of our struggle against the Ebola Virus Disease that has so put us on edge in Nigeria, even as it has decimated populations and devastated national health systems elsewhere in West Africa.

Yes indeed, Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh placed herself in harm's way as she battled to save the life of Mr Patrick Sawyer. She did what all doctors are trained to do. She put her life on the line.

Today, as she makes what I hope will turn out to be a successful struggle for her life, I note how proud I am to be a doctor, to belong to a crop of individuals who give themselves so that others may live, who sacrifice all that there is to sacrifice and more in order to ensure that others live well, who employ all means available to ensure that the conditions be made right for efficient and effective health care delivery, and sometimes get vilified for that.

Working alongside her colleagues and the nurses and other hospital staff at First Consultants, Dr Adadevoh was able to put us all on red alert regarding the changing status of Nigeria with respect to the epidemic.

It is true that two nurses, including Justina Echelonu, have already succumbed to the shepherd's crook-shaped virus. It is true that Dr Adadevoh is still ill. It is true that the government of President Jonathan is fiddling with the Residency Training Programme of doctors while Lagos burns in the wake of the Ebola onslaught.

But it is also true that there are a lot of people working and praying for Dr Adadevoh and the others who have been hit by this virus to somehow survive the illness. There are those in government and out of government who hope that the so-called experimental drugs (not Nanosilver please) will get to Nigeria in time to ensure that those health workers who lost their lives to Ebola did not lose their lives in vain. There are those who wish that the government will be sufficiently concerned by the plight of these people as to quit playing politics and harness all the diplomatic leverage it can in getting the Americans and other Westerners to send us whatever meaningful - really meaningful - help they can.

There are people like me who salute the courage of the nurses and doctors and other staff who attended to Patrick Sawyer and in the process became visible sufferers of the effects of that exposure.

As I pray for the repose of the souls of those nurses, and for full recovery - assisted or otherwise - for those yet alive, I thank God for the fact that regardless of what all Nigerians think, I belong to a class of people who society defines as doctors, and who define themselves by how completely they have been able to improve the lives of others. 

Note: On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Dr Adadevoh became the fifth Ebola virus fatality (mortality) in Nigeria. She was a consultant endocrinologist and was the first Nigerian to be diagnosed with the disease in Nigeria during the 2014 outbreak. May she rest in peace. Amen.