Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh

Dr. Adadevoh’s sacrifice prevented a national or possibly global catastrophe. DRASA Health Trust is founded in her memory, and is committed to protecting public health because Dr. Adadevoh gave her life to save millions of people –an incident that may have been prevented if Nigeria had a stronger, more prepared, and responsive health system. We owe it to ourselves as citizens to preserve her legacy by prioritizing health security and improving the control of infections as key to our overall development as a nation.

In 2012, H1N1 (swine flu) spread to Lagos, Nigeria and Dr. Adadevoh was the first doctor to diagnose and alert the Ministry of Health. Less than 2 years later, she was again the first doctor to identify another contagious virus – Ebola.

On July 20th 2014, Patrick Sawyer – Nigeria’s first Ebola patient – left quarantine in Liberia and flew to Lagos, Nigeria to attend a meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). He collapsed at the airport in Lagos and was taken to First Consultants Medical Centre (FCMC), the private hospital where Dr. Adadevoh worked. Under normal circumstances as an ECOWAS official, he should have been taken to a government hospital, but the doctors at all government health facilities were on an indefinite strike so he was taken to FCMC.

The first doctor at FCMC who saw Mr. Sawyer diagnosed him with malaria. When Dr. Adadevoh saw him during her ward round the following day, she suspected Ebola despite the initial malaria diagnosis and the fact that neither she, nor any other doctor in Nigeria, had ever seen Ebola before. Dr. Adadevoh questioned Mr. Sawyer about having contact with anyone with Ebola, which he denied. Being the thorough clinician she was, she immediately contacted the Lagos State and Federal Ministries of Health and got him tested for Ebola.

While waiting for the test results, the patient and other Liberian government officials began insisting that Dr. Adadevoh discharge Mr. Sawyer so he could attend the ECOWAS conference. She refused. They threatened to sue her for kidnapping and violating his human rights (holding him against his will because she did not have a confirmed diagnosis) but she continued to resist their relentless pressure and said that “for the greater public good” she would not release him.

Lagos State – and Nigeria as a whole – was not ready for Mr. Sawyer. Dr. Adadevoh and her team did what they could with the limited resources and supplies they had in the hospital to treat Mr. Sawyer. His Ebola diagnosis was later confirmed, and he died at FCMC.

Dr. Adadevoh’s accurate and swift diagnosis of Mr. Sawyer resulted in the Nigerian government mobilizing the necessary resources to deal with an Ebola outbreak. Her actions allowed for a much more strategic containment of the virus across the country and the Nigerian government was able to successfully trace all possible contacts from the index patient, Patrick Sawyer. There were 20 Ebola cases total. 11 were healthcare workers and of those healthcare workers, 6 survived and 5 died, including Dr. Adadevoh.