In its usual tradition to celebrate achievers, Google honoured late Nigerian Medic Stella Adadevoh with a Doodle on what was supposed to be her 62nd posthumous birthday.
Doodles are changes made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.
“Today our #Googledoodle celebrates the life of Stella Adadevoh, the Nigerian doctor, who helped stop the spread of Ebola in the country during the 2014 outbreak,” Google said in a statement.
Adadevoh, a consultant physician and endocrinologist, died after contracting the deadly Ebola virus while treating a Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, and other victims of the disease in Nigeria.
Adadevoh became a national hero after diagnosing and containing Nigeria’s first-ever Ebola patient in July 2014, although she has never seen an Ebola patient before.
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 3 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.
