Nigeria was declared free of the deadly Ebola virus on Monday after a determined doctor and thousands of officials and volunteers helped end an outbreak still ravaging other parts of West Africa and threatening the US and Spain.
Caught unawares when Liberian-American diplomat Patrick Sawyer arrived in Lagos from Liberia with the disease, authorities were alerted by Ameyo Adadevoh, a doctor who diagnosed Sawyer and kept him in the hospital despite protests from him and the Liberian government. Adadevoh later died from Ebola.
The Nigerian authorities then set about trying to contain the virus in an overcrowded city of 21 million where it could easily have turned a doomsday scenario if the about 300 people who had been in direct or indirect contact with Sawyer had not been traced and isolated.
“This is a spectacular success story,” Rui Gama Vaz from the WHO told a news conference in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, where officials broke into applause when he said that the country had shaken off the disease.
This year’s outbreak of the highly infectious hemorrhagic fever thought to have originated in forest bats is the worst ever. It has killed 4,546 people across the three most-affected countries, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, while travelers from the region have infected two people in Texas and one in Madrid.
The disease was imported to Nigeria when Sawyer collapsed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on July 20. Airport staff were unprepared and the government had not set up any isolation units, so he was able to infect several people, including health workers in the First Consultants hospital where he was taken.
Lagos — the commercial hub of Africa’s most populous nation, largest economy and leading energy producer — would have been an ideal springboard for Ebola to spread across the country.
“Nigeria was not really prepared for the outbreak, but the swift response from the federal government, state governments [and] international organizations ... was essential,” said Samuel Matoka, Ebola operations manager in Nigeria for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was involved in managing the outbreak, said officials and volunteers reached more than 26,000 households of people living around the contacts of the Ebola patients.
“Nigeria’s globally acclaimed success against Ebola is a testimony to what Nigerians can achieve if they set aside their differences and work together,” Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement.
Adadevoh prevented Sawyer from spreading Ebola further, said Benjamin Ohiaeri, a doctor there who survived the disease.
“We agreed that the thing to do was not to let him out of the hospital,” Ohiaeri said, even after Sawyer became aggressive and demanded to be set free. “If we had let him out, within 24 hours of being here, he would have contacted and infected a lot more people.”
Ohiaeri said Sawyer was reported as having malaria, but Adadevoh noticed he had bloodshot eyes and blood in his urine — telltale signs of hemorrhagic fever. She instructed that under no circumstances should he be allowed to leave.
Ohiaeri said a Liberian government official on the phone had even threatened negative consequences if they did not release Sawyer, but the hospital staff held firm.
“The lesson there is: Stand your ground,” he said.
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