by Verity Awala
Ebola in Nigeria, may have come and gone but to those
who directly lost loved ones, the vacuum persists – That’s
the story of the only surviving son of late Dr Stella
Adedevoh and he has spoken out for the first time:
Late Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh’s son and the founder of
taxi service, EasyTaxi, Bankole Cardoso, in a recent
interview with NPR, revealed that life without his mum has
been devastating.
According to him:
“She’s synonymous with First Consultants Hospital.
Upon seeing the patient, she was told that he was
coming from Liberia, so she immediately suspected
that he may have an infectious disease, because he
was being treated for malaria at the time. And she
noticed that it seemed as if he was bleeding on the
surface of his skin. So that was the first time I ever
heard her speak about Ebola.
“All I remember her saying at the time — this was just
her nature, never about herself — just I remember what
she was saying was that he seemed scared, the
patient. And so she was praying for him and telling him
everything will be fine.
“Just like her normal self, as you would hear from
anyone in Nigeria that has come across her, that she is
completely selfless. She gives her all to all her patients.
When someone is ill, she is happy to do an in-house
call, she’s happy to do anything to make sure they’re
fine.
“Beyond the medicine, she was always there for people.
I remember her being so affected that he was so
scared and worried about himself, when she had to tell
him that she believes he has an infectious disease.
Later on, I found out that when he was told he had an
infectious disease, he went bananas, he was furious
and he demanded to be released from the hospital.
“At that point, and this I know as well, the Liberian
government was calling her and pressuring her to
release him, that he had come for an important
meeting, an international conference in Calabar — in the
eastern part of Nigeria.
“So they demanded for him to be released, citing that
he was kidnapped by the hospital and that it’s against
his human rights to keep him there. They threatened
her multiple times. She stood her ground. There was no
way to let him go because he was putting the rest of
Nigeria at risk if he left the hospital.”
“When she fell ill herself, it was more my dad noticing.
Normally she’s an extremely active person. But one
Saturday she seemed to be just taking her time, not
really her normal self.
“So he suspected and we spoke, and she says she feels
okay. When she didn’t go to work on Monday and
Tuesday is when she started to feel ill.
“She didn’t want to go into the isolation unit. Because
when the Liberian national was at her hospital, I
remember she used the world uninhabitable. That that
place was uninhabitable [the isolation unit that was
being made ready by the health authorities].
“Eventually, two days later, an ambulance came and we
went to the isolation unit. The WHO doctor said he has
dealt with hundreds of Ebola patients. In every five, two
walk away, two have to be managed, one dies.
“And so he said that, in this condition, where he was
working with bare health bones, understaffed, he was
really battling and it’s going to be a tough situation.
“Then the doctor was speaking to her and after he told
us he suspects she has this disease. Of course at that
point, I completely lost it, but I spoke to her and she
was like, do not worry, this thing is not going to kill
me.”
God continue to rest her soul!
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