Photos: The Ameyo Adadedevoh That We Knew- Siblings Speak

The Late Doctor Ameyo 

Kojo Adadevoh and Ama Adadevoh are two of the siblings of Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh, the latest entrant into Nigeria's list of posthumous heroines. Adadevoh, a senior consultant at First Consultant Hospital, Obalende, Lagos, died on Tuesday, August 19, after being infected with the Ebola virus by Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American, who brought the disease to Nigeria. In this interview with  BBC Africa, Kojo and Ama pay tribute to their brave sister.

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What kind of a person was your sister? 
Ama: My sister was a very loving and giving person. She was a big sister, not just to us, her siblings, but also to others in the extended family. On both sides of the family, on my father’s side and my mother’s side, she was the oldest grandchild, and she took on everybody as a younger sibling. All the cousins on both sides, looked up to her as a big sister. She was there for everybody always. She put people before herself.



So, Kodjo I suppose it didn’t come as a surprise then that she became a doctor then, given that she was so loving, sharing and
giving?

Kojo:  No, absolutely not. The medical tradition is very deep. My father was a pathologist. And Ama, that you are speaking with now is a dentist. I am a scientist myself. I am a biochemist. So, science runs deep in our blood and Ameyo dedicated her life to service. That is how I would like to remember her, as someone who gave her life for the service of her profession and also for humanity.


What did she tell you about her work?
Ama: She was passionate about her work. She was would go to work seven days a week. We would go visiting in Nigeria and plan fun stuffs with her. At the last minutes, she would get a phone call from the hospital and she would ditch us, show up in the hospital and we would be left to do whatever we had planned on our own. 

She was always there. She was a hands-on kind of doctor. At this point in her career, she was a senior doctor. And if you know what that means, most senior doctors are not hands-on, because they have junior colleagues who do the hands-on works. 

 But Ameyo was different from the average senior doctor. She was always there, and that is partly why this probably happened to her because she was always there for her patients. A lot of people have asked us how come she was involved in patient care since she was a senior doctor. But that was the kind of doctor Ameyo was. Her heart was in her job. She was passionate about what she did, very dedicated and very hardworking. She was somebody who would never turn her phone off. Her phone was on 24/7.

Given what we know of what happened when Patrick Sawyer came to that hospital, and what your sister was about, tell us what you were told about the incident.

Kojo: My understanding of what happened was that Sawyer was attended to...

Ama: (Cuts in) Can I tell this story, because I know it better than he does. Patrick Sawyer presented on a Sunday, at the hospital, after he collapsed at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria. Ameyo was not in the hospital at the time. One of the junior doctors admitted him, and his impression was that the patient had malaria. He called Ameyo on the phone and they discussed what needed to be done to keep him stable till the next day. The next morning, she went to work and was doing her ward round. I am telling you what she told me because I spoke to her on that same Monday. So, she took a look at the patient and told herself, this looks like Ebola. She questioned the gentleman a little bit further, and realised that, indeed, he did come from Liberia. At that point, she was convinced. They started doing the necessary precautionary measures to protect the staff and everybody, and she alerted the Lagos State authorities, the Health Minister and all the other important people who needed to know what was going on. Obviously, a blood sample was taken to get tested, but it wasn’t confirmed at this point but she had a high suspicion that this is what it was. Sawyer wanted to leave but my sister told him that he could not leave in that condition. At this point, she had told him that she suspected that he had the Ebola virus. She refused to allow him leave the hospital.

Kojo: After Ameyo and the staff had informed the Minister of Health, technically, their job was done at that point. The challenge then became what is Nigeria’s position and what is their preparedness for a situation like this. That was when they realized that there was nowhere for someone with this kind of ailment to go. Ameyo realized that it made no sense for them to allow him to leave the hospital, and she ensured that they kept him there. And that is why everyone is singing her praises now, because if he had left, we will not be talking the way we are today. The situation will be twenty times worse than it is. This is because Lagos State had no facility for people with Ebola. The country as a whole didn’t have a facility for this kind of ailment. That is why he ended up where he was.

 How would you like to remember your sister?
Kojo: Growing up as kids, my father always referred to her as a Tornado. This is ringing up so loud in my head. She is someone who came to this earth, granted she had a very short stay here, but she made a very significant impact on, not just me, but everyone who she touched

Ama: She was somebody who was not self-centered at all. She would always put herself last, and I would always tell her that she needed to slow down, take a breadth and look after herself. But she thrived on tha