Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American government official, arrived at Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport on July 20, 2014. He was sick, and he collapsed at the arrivals gate before being rushed to First Consultants Hospital in the city's Obalende district.
At the hospital, Dr. Stella Ameyo Adadevoh took his case. She had been a physician for more than three decades. When she examined Sawyer, she suspected his symptoms pointed to Ebola. Sawyer wanted to leave. She refused to release him.
That refusal set off a containment operation that would define Nigeria's response to the worst Ebola outbreak in West Africa's history. By the time the epidemic was declared over in 2016, the virus had infected more than 28,000 people and killed over 11,000 globally, according to the World Health Organisation. Nigeria recorded 20 cases and eight deaths. Among the dead were healthcare workers who had treated Sawyer, including Adadevoh herself.
The source material for this story is a news report. The report does not name the doctor who first noticed something was wrong with Sawyer, but it does name Adadevoh as the doctor who insisted he remain isolated. It also does not specify whether she was the first physician to examine him. The report says she became suspicious while examining him.
Sawyer had flown in from Liberia, a country already buckling under the outbreak. He was in Lagos for a conference. At First Consultants, his condition deteriorated. The report does not describe his symptoms, nor does it say how Adadevoh reached her conclusion. It says only that she suspected Ebola and ordered isolation.
The pressure to release him came quickly. The report does not say who applied it, or what form it took. It says she refused to let him leave until proper tests were carried out. The tests confirmed her suspicion. Sawyer had Ebola.
That one decision bought Nigerian health authorities time. Contact tracing began immediately. Hundreds of people who had interacted with Sawyer were identified, monitored and tested. The response was fast and coordinated, and it worked. What could have become a major outbreak in one of the world's busiest cities was stopped.
Adadevoh did not survive to see it. She died on August 19, 2014, at the age of 57, after spending her final days in isolation, away from her family. Her body was decontaminated and cremated by the Nigerian government. Her family received her ashes for a private burial.
When Nigeria released its 2014 National Honours List months later, her name was missing. The omission drew surprise from many Nigerians. She was later recognised with several awards, including the ECOWAS Award of Excellence. In 2022, she was posthumously awarded the Officer of the Order of the Niger, one of Nigeria's national honours.
Her story reached a wider audience through the 2016 Nollywood film 93 Days, which dramatised the events of the outbreak. The film focused on the staff of First Consultants Hospital and their fight to contain the virus.
Ebola outbreaks have continued in parts of Africa since 2014, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. But for many Nigerians, the 2014 crisis remains a reference point for how close the country came to a much larger health disaster. A single doctor's decision to stand her ground, at a moment when the whole country was at risk, changed the course of that crisis. She did not just treat a patient. She refused to let him walk out the door.
According to Pulse.ng.
