God help the country,” said Galilio in Berthold Brecht’s Life of Galileo in need of heroes. Nigeria here bucks the trend of that admonition. For a dispirited nation, the heroic self-sacrifice of the consultant, Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh has provided a benchmark of what patriotism and public service should mean.
Not surprisingly, she gave her life for an entire nation. This cannot be surprising coming from a direct descendant of the illustrious nationalist, Herbert Macaulay who equally threw everything and sacrificed his comforts for the cause of self-determination.
Adadevoh’s professional comportment prevented what would have been a catastrophe. The nation’s grotesquely underfunded public health infrastructure simply could not have coped with the consequences of what would have happened had Adadevoh not placed herself on the firing line.
This is why the nation must immortalise her worthy endeavour. This is not the time for vacuous self-serving utterances. This is the time to recognise the sacrifice of those in the health sector who honourably made the supreme sacrifice.
What has to be done now is to prepare for the inevitable fire next time. Great budget allocations must be made to the public health sector. Suitable investments have to be made in the prevention and containment of infectious diseases. Since prevention is clearly better than the elusive search for cure, proactive strategies must now be given the highest level of priority.
This is the only way to genuinely reward the heroism and self-sacrifice of Dr. Adadevoh et al. we owe ourselves as a nation as human beings that.
