Nigerian Doctor Made Famous By 2014 Ebora Crisis Benjamin Ohiaeri Is Dead
Dr Benjamin Nnamdi Ohiaeri, who was in the midst of the Ebola Crisis of 2014, is dead.
Online magazine platform, Nairaland, where the news was broken, gave no date of his passing.
Ohiaeri was the Founder and Chief Medical Director of First Consultants Medical Centre, the hospital that was at the centre of the 2014 ebola crisis in Nigeria.
He founded First Consultants Hospital in 1982 in a relatively small white building on Obalende Road area of Lagos.
The hospital moved to a much bigger facility on 16-24 St Gregory’s College Road, Obalende in 1989 and 1990.
Today, it occupies a plot at the junction of Ikoyi Road and St Gregory’s College Road (opposite Obalende Roundabout).
FIRST FAMILY BIRTHS
The then First Lady of Nigeria, Mrs Maryam Babangida, gave birth to Halima at First Consultants in 1989.
The then First Lady of Lagos, Mrs Munira Marwa, gave birth to Imran at First Consultants in 1998.
EBOLA CRISIS
On July 20th, 2014 a Liberian diplomat, Patrick Sawyer, flew into Lagos on his way to Calabar for an Ecowas conference. He became very ill at the airport and was rushed to First Consultants Medical Centre.
He arrived First Consultants around 9 o’clock at night.
Sawyer was asked by the doctors at First Consultants whether he had any contact with anyone that had any symptoms of the Ebola disease and he said no.
His travel history showed that he did not come directly from Liberia. He said that he thought that he had malaria and tests were done which confirmed that he had the malaria parasite in his system and so they started treating him for malaria.
However, by the next morning he was presenting unusual symptoms.
He was hemorrhaging (there was blood in his urine and blood patches in his eyes) and he had acute diarrhoea and was vomiting.
The chief physician and endocrinologist, Dr Ameyo Adadevoh, suspected that he had ebola, so she made arrangements to have his samples tested. The closest lab that could run the test was at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and she spoke to the person that runs the lab and they arranged to collect the sample.
First Consultant also set up a crisis committee and Dr Adadevoh made her findings known to it.
Dr Adadevoh informed Mr Sawyer about their suspicions that he had ebola.
He accepted the news without any problem.
However, trouble broke out when she informed him that he had to stay at the hospital until they got the result.
Sawyer insisted that he had to attend the ECOWAS conference in Calabar.
He became unruly and insisted that he must be allowed to leave.
The Liberian Ambassador to Nigeria also made things difficult for the hospital.
He called and demanded that Sawyer must be released.
He threatened that First Consultant would be charged with kidnapping and that the hospital’s actions would cause a diplomatic incident.
Ohiaeri had to take the phone from Adadevoh and told the Ambassador that Sawyer could not be released and he said that the risk of releasing an ebola patient onto the streets of Lagos was more serious than any kidnapping charge or diplomatic incident.
Sawyer deliberately infected staff of First Consultant with the disease.
He removed his intravenous line and spilled his blood, he smeared his body fluid on the drip and asked a staff to check the drip, etc.
Things changed when the test result showed that Sawyer had the disease.
Adadevoh contacted officials of the Lagos State Government and the government provided assistance to the hospital.
President Goodluck Jonathan signed an emergency order and security agents from the police and military assisted in ensuring that patients did not escape and that contact tracing could be carried out.
The Foreign Minister called Ohiaeri, who told him about the threats of the Liberian Ambassador.
The Foreign Minister wrote a strong letter of protest to the Liberian Government and the Ambassador was recalled.
The crisis had a terrible effect on First Consultants.
A lot of their equipment had to be destroyed. The hospital was shut down for months, but Dr Ohiaeri had to ensure that salaries were still paid. Even after the hospital was reopened, patients were afraid to go there.
Ohiaeri said that equipment could be replaced, but the greatest loss was the staff.
He said that he had planned to retire and lecture at the university.
He had hoped to make Adadevoh the Chief Medical Director of the hospital (she would have succeeded him), but the disease killed her.
Several staff of the hospital were killed by the disease. They were irreplaceable.
The stigma was so great that the family of one of the staff that died was evicted by their landlord; and Dr Ohiaeri had to rent another apartment for them and pay the school fees of the children.
Dr Ohiaeri attended university in the United States and he was close to members of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA). These contacts assisted him in managing the situation.
Nigerian doctors in the US got him direct contact with the US secretary (minister) for health and human services and the Centers for Disease Control. He was able to share experiences with them.
ANPA donated protective equipment to the hospital and the Lagos State Government.
He was able to establish contact with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and WHO experts decontaminated the hospital.
According to Dr Ohiaeri: “The events of the past months have been very overwhelming to say the least. I have refrained from speaking all these while because I wanted to tell my story in a sequential manner. We have lost a lot of things-our laboratory, laundry, nursing room, monitoring line- name it. But none of these compares to the human resource losses. When people come here and ask me how much equipment we have lost, I say to them that the most important equipment to me are the people. I recall that some of my colleagues with who we took decisions together are now late. I cannot understand it. I wonder why I am still alive and not dead? I wonder why the dead are not like me?”
“Here in Lagos, we lost seven people as a result of Mr Sawyer’s bio-terrorism and four of such deaths were staff of First Consultant hospital. That means we bore the brunt of the disease for the country. Look at Dr Adadevoh for instance, here is a doctor that use to take care of me because I was hypertensive. She used to give me my drugs weekly but before this Ebola experience, she gave me a dosage that was to last me a month. Then I said to her” its like I have graduated now to taking one month dose” and we laughed over it. She had her son in this hospital and I was the one who took the delivery. Look at Dr Abaniwo, who died before Dr Adadevoh. He was with us for four years. He contracted the virus when he went over to intervene when Mr Sawyer was harassing Dr Adadevoh at a time he(Sawyer) had become angry and restive. Evelyn was a widow and a nurse with four children. Very humble, loyal and diligent. She was with us when Dr Adadevoh was delivered of her baby. She was the first person who welcomed Sawyer. She was part of this institution. Her death was heartbreaking. It was devastating. Soon after her death, the landlord threw her children out of their home. And we are doing all we can to take care of them. We have got them an accommodation and they have settled in. For Dr Adadevoh, she worked with me for 21years. She was a smart professional who I took as my number 1 person. Look at Dr Ada Igonor, who survived the epidemic. I have adopted her as my daughter. She started work here on July 1st 2014, 20 days before the arrival of Mr Sawyer. It was Dr Adadevoh who brought her here. At the isolation center, she was two beds away from Dr Adadevoh. Yet she was the one monitoring everyone in the hospital and giving us reports on hourly basis. That helped us to know what package to bring to them and every line of action to take. Infact, it was right in her arm that our own late Nurse Justina died”
AFTER EBOLA
Dr Ohiaeri and First Consultants received praise and awards for their actions during the Ebola crisis.
However, he lamented that he was not invited by the government to share his experience during the crisis in order to learn from what happened and prepare for another such crisis.
The crisis gave birth to a movie “93 Days,” in which Ohiaeri was played by ace American Actor Danny Glover.
