Honour Ameyo Adedevoh Now!
It is a fact that Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh almost single-handedly prevented the country from being consumed by the Ebola Viral Haemorrhagic Disease by instantly recognizing it in Sawyer as a Haemorrhagic fever, having Ebola high on her list of differential diagnoses and detaining Mr Sawyer as she refused to bow to pressure from Liberian embassy officials to release him! She made efforts to notify the health authorities.
She had personally prepared for such an event as she researched further into the disease. In spite of all her efforts, she got infected and died of the same disease.
At the height of the Ebola "scourge", her family....like those of others so afflicted... was ostracized as "friends", relations and neighbours abandoned their home. They suffered other indignities!
Even First Consultants Hospital, Obalende, Lagos, Nigeria, where she worked was deserted for months after efforts by the government led to the containment of what would have been a huge epidemic.
Yet as even survivors were avoided, their serum remains the only sure cure of the disease.
Ebola is so contagious that not only liquid body fluids but even atomized or aerosolized body fluids were extremely infectious....so, caregivers needed a full complement of masks, gloves, caps or hoods, goggles, aprons and boots!
And contact tracing mandated that all so recognized primary,secondary and even tertiary contacts were quarantined!
The blunt refusal of Jonathan to add Dr Ameyo Adadevoh's name to the honours list even as his attention was called to the fact wouldn't have been so painful had he not honoured and pardoned criminal felons like Dipriye Alameseigha whose official pardon de facto rubbed off his criminal records! All thanks to Goodluck Ebele Jonathan!
Jona said he does not believe in honoring the dead...thus implying that you are honorable only if you do not serve your nation into death! A sure proof that the man is daft! For persons of saner minds have clearly identified death in the service of fatherland as the Supreme Sacrifice! The more reason why soldiers who die in battle are forever remembered... and the very essence of our Armed Forces Remembrance Day!
He said theft is not corruption. He stated that he would not jail corrupt government officials and admonished voters to refrain from electing Buhari who he said "would simply build more jails to house government thieves"! He said other things which were eminently unpresidential....
Perhaps I would have reined in the urge to write this article...if the next picture that popped in my line of vision had not been that of this dreadful man...a man who not only took pains to honour bad men but would take equal pains to gloss over the exploits of good citizens by bluntly refusing to honour them!
No time would be more auspicious to bestow a national honour on Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh than now...after the ouster of this dreadful man!
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.