It has been one year since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria free of Ebola Virus Disease but the federal government has not forgotten the efforts of Dr Stella Adadevoh of First Consultant Hospital in Lagos and other partners who made the success story possible. Adadevoh was the doctor who helped to stop the spread of Ebola in Nigeria by insisting on strict isolation of the index case, Patrick Sawyer, but later died after contracting the virus. In a press briefing yesterday on the first anniversary of declaration of Nigeria as Ebola-free, the permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr. Linus Awute, said the response to the outbreak, which brought together the finest hands in the control, showed the true capacity of Nigeria.

Awute said, “The sacrifices of the late Dr. Adadevoh, the entire team at First Consultant Hospital in Lagos, all health workers and their family members dead and alive, remain one we shall forever cherish.” He added that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will soon establish a survival clinic in collaboration with tertiary health institutions to address the issue of relapse in survival. “Since Nigeria was declared Ebola-free, the global Ebola control environment has changed based on new evidence around care for Ebola in pregnancy, survivors’ related symptoms, discovery of Ebola vaccine, relapse of the disease and most recently, evidence of sexual transmission of the disease by survivors carrying the virus in their semen and vaginal secretions,” he noted.