Dr. Ada was the first person that saw Sawyer when he arrived the hospital. Sawyer told her he had Malaria and never told her he was coming from Liberia where he had been in contact with his sister who died of Ebola.
On the second day when Sawyer did not show sign of recovery from malaria despite the aggressive treatment, Dr. Ada and others at First Consultants became concerned. She then invited her boss, Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, the senior consultant at the hospital, who immediately suspected Ebola and ordered for test.
In one of the several incidents with the deteriorating Sawyer within 24 hours, he became restive and dropped his drip bag on the floor and called for assistance. And when the nurse came, he told her that he wanted to see the doctor and not the nurse. When the doctor arrived, she found the drip bag on the floor. She then assisted him to reset the drip without gloves and protective clothing. That may have been the moment of contact with Sawyer’s fluid.
The female doctor’s recovery is seen as a giant step towards providing a deeper understanding of how to manage Ebola patients for Nigerian doctors and the US Centre for Disease Control's personnel assisting them. Her recovery, THISDAY gathered, was because of her strong immune system, which was boosted by supportive drugs, that is a cocktail of antibiotics and immune boosting drugs.
The cheery news of Ada’s recovery was announced yesterday by the Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, at a press briefing held at Yaba Psychiatry, Lagos. Chukwu also said that at present, five of the other confirmed cases of EVD in Nigeria had almost fully recovered
