Meet Dr. Stella Adadevoh, the UNILAG-trained doctor whose 2014 decision helped stop Ebola in Nigeria

Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh would have turned 70 today. Her name is being remembered again as Nigeria responds to its first confirmed Ebola case in 12 years, because in 2014 she helped stop Nigeria’s first Ebola outbreak before it spread through Lagos.

Dr. Adadevoh was born in Lagos on 27 October 1956, the first of four children of Dr. Babatunde Kwaku Adadevoh, a physician who became the fourth vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos, and Deborah Regina McIntosh. Her family roots include the Adadevoh family of Ghana’s Volta Region, and some accounts describe her as a great-granddaughter of the nationalist Herbert Macaulay.

She attended Mainland Preparatory School and Corona School in Yaba, then Queen’s School, Ibadan, finishing in 1974. She earned her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Lagos College of Medicine, completed her housemanship at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in 1981, and served her youth service year at the Eti-Osa Health Centre.

After her residency at LUTH, she became a fellow of the West African College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1983 and worked as a consultant at LUTH until 1991, when a British Council scholarship took her to Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London, for a fellowship in endocrinology.

She later joined First Consultants Medical Centre in Obalende, Lagos, where she spent 21 years as lead consultant physician and endocrinologist, in a career that spanned more than three decades. She was a member of the Nigerian Medical Association, the Medical Women Association of Nigeria, the British-Nigerian Association and the National Postgraduate Medical College. She was also reportedly the first to alert the Ministry of Health when H1N1 reached Nigeria in 2012.

In July 2014, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American, collapsed at Lagos airport after a flight from Liberia and was taken to First Consultants. A first doctor reportedly diagnosed malaria. When Dr. Adadevoh saw him the next day, she suspected Ebola. She kept him in the hospital despite his insistence on leaving and a request from the Liberian ambassador that he be released, isolated him and alerted health authorities.

Sawyer died on 24 July. Dr. Adadevoh contracted Ebola while treating him and died in quarantine in Lagos on 19 August 2014, aged 57. Nigeria recorded 20 cases and 8 deaths in all, and on 20 October 2014 WHO declared the country Ebola-free, calling it a “spectacular success story.”

She has since been honoured widely. Awards include posthumous recognition from the Rotary Club of Abuja-Metro and WIMBIZ, honorary doctorates from the National Open University of Nigeria and Baze University, and the 2018 ECOWAS Prize of Excellence. Google marked what would have been her 62nd birthday with a Doodle in 2018.

A road in Abuja, “Ameyo Adadevoh Way,” was named after her in February 2020, and the 2016 film 93 Days tells the story of her hospital’s response. The Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh Health Trust (DRASA) was created in her memory.

She married Afolabi Emmanuel Cardoso in 1986, and they had one son, Bankole Cardoso. As Nigeria monitors the contacts of its latest case, her story is being cited again as a reminder of what frontline clinicians can do.

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