The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) struck at the heart of Nigeria, when Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh, a consultant physician, and member of the illustrious Kwaku Adadevoh/Herbert Macaulay/Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowder lineage succumbed to the scourge of the disease.
Adadevoh contracted the virus from the Liberian, Mr. Patrick Sawyer, who imported the disease into Nigeria. Sources close to Adadevoh, 58, said she succumbed to the disease yesterday evening, having been in a coma for some days.
Adadevoh, who is survived by one son, had led the medical team at First Consultants Medical Centre, a Lagos-based hospital, which treated Sawyer on his arrival in Lagos.
As the head of operations at First Consultants, Adadevoh was praised for being the first to detect that Sawyer, who was admitted at First Consultants for five days before his death, was not being truthful when he denied that he was infected with the Ebola virus.
After he had tested negative for malaria and other diseases, she was said to have ordered that his blood be tested for Ebola. It was the positive result of the test that enabled the hospital to contact the Lagos State health authorities about the first Ebola patient in the country.
Her death brings to five, including the index case Sawyer, the total number of persons who have succumbed to the scourge of the disease in Nigeria.
Among those who have passed on, Adedavoh is the first doctor and the fourth Nigerian to have died from the virus. Others who died before her comprised two nurses and the ECOWAS protocol officer, Jatto Abdulqudir, who picked up an already infected Sawyer from the Murtala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos.
However, five others who contracted the disease from Sawyer have been discharged while two others remain in the isolation ward at the Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, Lagos.
Prior to Adadevoh’s death, her family and colleagues had held a press briefing in Lagos appealing to the US government to intervene to keep her from dying.
They felt that the medical care she was getting in the isolation ward was insufficient and had called on the US government to send the ZMapp trial drug to save her life.
Adadevoh comes from an illustrious family of physicians, politicians, statesmen and clerics.
Her father, the late Dr. Babatunde Kwaku Adadevoh, was a renowned Harvard University-trained physician and former vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos, while her grandmother was the daughter of Sir Herbert Samuel Macaulay, a foremost politician and founder of Nigerian nationalism in the early 1940s.
Macaulay himself was the grandson of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who was ordained the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church in Nigeria in 1864, making Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, his great-great-great-grand daughter.
The Adadevoh family can trace their roots to the Creoles in Sierra Leone, Ghana and South-west Nigeria.
Ogun Detains Guinean Travellers
Meanwhile, the Ogun State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, yesterday disclosed that four travellers coming into the country from Guinea through an illegal border area in Imeko-Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State have been detained and were being monitored by the state government in its efforts to prevent the spread of the dreaded Ebola virus.
Guinea was the first country where the virus was detected in West Africa almost six months ago before it spread to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Soyinka, who disclosed this at a press conference in his office in Abeokuta yesterday, said response teams have been put in place at the local government area levels who serve as surveillance teams.
According to him, they had been detained because they could not convince the border authorities that they had not been in contact with patients who had contacted the virus.
He added that the circumstances of their crossing was a bit worrying, "they were told until they could convince the authorities, they have to go back or if they were to come to Nigeria, they have to observe them”.
He explained that the travellers who were coming from Guinea en route Nigeria agreed to be in the area for monitoring for the next 21 days.
"So they are staying there, they are not being quarantined but agreed voluntarily to wait while they are being observed to ensure that they have no symptoms,” he said.
While reassuring residents that the state is free of the virus, Soyinka stated that in addition to further training of the healthcare workers, there was refresher information and further sensitisation at the border areas.
According to him, the state currently has three quarantine and isolation centres in each of the three senatorial districts of the state, and urged the public to cooperate fully with the efforts of the state government in the interest of their health.
He reiterated that the virus could only be contacted through body fluids of an infected person not by just sitting with the person, advising the public to maintain personal hygiene with regular hand washing and the use of sanitisers.
The commissioner further advised that unnecessary physical contact at public gatherings should be avoided, saying: “Do not travel to areas where the epidemic is active, avoid hunting and eating bush meat. If you suspect Ebola, contact the health authorities immediately.”
He said the state government was compiling a list of volunteers who could be called upon for a variety of tasks to alleviate the disease.
Source: Thisday