Nigeria declared Ebola-free thanks to doctor

Nigeria was declared free of the deadly Ebola virus yesterday after six weeks with no new cases, an achievement with lessons for countries still struggling to contain the deadly virus.

“This is a spectacular success story,” World Health Organization representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the capital Abuja, where officials broke into applause when he announced Nigeria had shaken off the disease.

“It shows that Ebola can be contained, but we must be clear that we have only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola.”

This year’s Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, has killed 4,546 people across the three countries most affected — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Its arrival in Lagos, an overcrowded city of 21 million people, sparked fears of a doomsday scenario in which it became impossible to contain because of contacts too diffuse to trace.

As the commercial hub of Africa’s most populous nation, largest economy and leading energy producer, it would have been an ideal springboard for Ebola to spread across the country.

The first case in Nigeria was imported from Liberia when Liberian-American diplomat Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20.

Authorities were caught unawares, airport staff were not prepared and no hospitals had an isolation unit, so he was able to infect several people, including health workers at the hospital where he was taken.

But they acted fast after the doctor on duty, who later herself died of the disease, quarantined him against his will and contacted officials.

Ameyo Adadevoh, the doctor at the First Consultants hospital in Lagos, kept him in the hospital despite his protests and those of the Liberian government, preventing the dying man spreading it further, said Benjamin Ohiaeri, a doctor there who survived the disease.

“We agreed that the thing to do was not to let him out of the hospital,” Ohiaeri said, even after he became aggressive and demanded to be set free.

“If we had let him out, within 24 hours of being here, he would have contacted and infected a lot more people ... The lesson there is: stand your ground.”

Once the hospital contacted the ministries of health in the state of Lagos and the federal ministry in Abuja, authorities quickly set up and equipped an isolation unit.