Google Celebrates Stella Adadevoh’s 62nd Posthumous Birthday

Paul Mbagwu

Google is celebrating late Nigerian doctor, Stella Adadevoh’s 62nd posthumous birthday with one of their doodles.

Doodles are changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.

Dr Stella Adadevoh was a Nigerian doctor, who helped stop the spread of Ebola in the country during the 2014 outbreak. She contracted Ebola as a result and died in the process.

Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh was the Lead Consultant Physician and Endocrinologist at a private hospital in Lagos, Nigeria where she worked for 21 years.

She had never seen Ebola before but was able to diagnose and contain Nigeria’s first-ever Ebola patient in July 2014. When threatened by Liberian officials who wanted the patient to be discharged to attend a conference, she resisted the pressure and said, “For the greater public good” she would not release him.

Since Nigeria’s health system was not prepared for an outbreak at the time, she contracted Ebola and died alongside three of her colleagues.

Her heroic efforts prevented a major outbreak in the most populous African country and served as the catalyst for successful government action to contain the spread of what would have been a major outbreak in a country of more than 190 million people.

As a result of her keen perception, courage, and steadfastness, all 20 Ebola cases in Nigeria were traced to a single path of transmission originating with the first (index) patient who took a flight from Monrovia, Liberia to Lagos.

This is what differentiated the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria from the outbreaks in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where the index patients were not initially diagnosed or contained.

The World Health Organization declared Nigeria Ebola-free on the 20th of October 2014.