A requiem mass was held at the Christ the King Church on Friday, September 12, 2014 for Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh, the lead consultant physician and endocrinologist at the First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos, Nigeria.
Dr Adadevoh contracted the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and died after coming into contact with a victim from Liberia.
The physician, who died on August 19, 2014, prevented Mr Patrick Sawyer, an American-Liberian who had arrived in Lagos en route to an ECOWAS meeting in Calabar, from leaving the medical centre when he showed symptoms of the EVD.
Her action was based on the fact that Mr Sawyer, who later died of the disease, posed a danger to members of the Nigerian public and the participants at the ECOWAS meeting.
She quarantined and treated Sawyer but unfortunately she contracted the disease which led to her death. She has since been buried in Nigeria.
A cousin of the late Dr Adadevoh, Mrs Sedina Tay-Agbozo, described her as a warm and friendly person who pursued any cause she believed in.
“She was committed and firm” she told the Daily Graphic and added that “By refusing to allow Mr Sawyer to leave the hospital, she prevented the disease from spreading.”
An uncle of the late Dr Adadevoh and an Obstetrician Gynaecologist, Prof. Sydney Kobla Adadevoh, told the Daily Graphic that: “She put herself at risk and became a victim of the disease she was trying to prevent from spreading. She served for more than three decades, doing what she loved best—serving humanity.”
Prof. Adadevoh said by identifying Mr Sawyer as a victim of the EVD in August, this year, Ameyo prevented a national catastrophe, left a permanent mark on society and made solid her legacy as a courageous and patriotic heroine.
Brief biography
The late Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh was born on October 27, 1956 in Lagos, Nigeria. She was the first of four children.
Her paternal grandfather, an Anlo from Anyako and a staff of the United Africa Company (UAC), was transferred from the Gold Coast to Lagos in the early 1940s where he married the daughter of Herbert Macaulay, Nigerian nationalist.
The union produced many children including Prof. Babatunde Kwaku Adadevoh, a renowned Harvard University-trained physician and a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, who is Ameyo’s father.
Ameyo’s mother, Deborah Regina Mcintosh, is a niece of Nigeria’s first President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe.
She was awarded a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree by the University of Lagos in 1980.
In 1993, she completed a fellowship course in Endocrinology at Hammersmith Hospital of the Imperial College in London, UK.
For more than three decades, she practised as a medical doctor and for 21 of those years, she was the lead consultant physician and endocrinologist at the First Consultants Medical Centre in Obadele, Lagos.
Events leading to her death
Mr Sawyer was sent to the First Consultants Medical Centre in Lagos when he collapsed a few minutes after arriving in Lagos on his way to Calabar for an ECOWAS meeting.
The first impression that Dr Adadevoh had was that Mr Sawyer was suffering from malaria but other symptoms showed that he was not.
She had an HIV test conducted on Mr Sawyer, which proved negative.
She then consulted senior medical practitioners who urged her to test for Ebola. The test proved positive.
Immense pressure was brought on Dr Adadevoh by the Liberian government to release Mr Sawyer to attend the meeting but she refused because he posed a danger to the public and had him isolated and later quarantined.
Tests conducted on Dr Adadevoh later proved that she had contracted the disease.
She later fell into a coma and despite attempts to save her, she could not survive the scourge of the disease.
She was an aunty to Radio Ghana’s presidential correspondent Pascaline Ameyo Adadevoh.
May her soul rest in perfect peace..
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