Nigerian Medical Doctor who survived Ebola in 2014 is Bill Gate’s Hero in TIME Magazine

Nigerian doctor Adaora Okoli said her uncle once asked if she was “nuts” when she mentioned her plan to study infectious diseases at Tulane University, considering that she contracted Ebola while treating Nigeria’s patient zero in 2014.

The 27-year-old graduate student laughed by phone Thursday afternoon (Jan. 4) as she recalled her uncle saying “you shouldn’t even be talking about infections because you just almost died.” She enrolled into Tulane regardless, and her tenacity inspired philanthropist Bill Gates so much so that he recognized her Thursday as one of his “Heroes in the Field.”

Time Magazine asked Gates to serve as its first guest editor for the company’s Jan. 15 issue of its publication. He tweeted Thursday that he decided to focus on a handful of optimistic people who inspire him. With this in mind, Gates featured Okoli and four other people in his personal blog as heroes who “are saving the world.”

“I met Ada a few years ago, and heard her harrowing story of survival. She has now dedicated her medical career to the research, treatment, and prevention of future epidemics. Her courage and her optimism are inspiring,” Gates wrote.

Okoli said she was caring for patients in a Lagos hospital in July 2014 when 40-year-old Liberian Patrick Sawyer arrived at their facility, visibly ill. She picked up the intravenous fluid bag from his bed the next day while she was checking his condition, which was undiagnosed Ebola.

Sawyer died in July a few days after the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying West African countries needed international help to contain Ebola. Okoli said she learned in August her blood tested positive for Ebola, prompting her colleagues to quarantine her in an isolation center with other Ebola patients.

“When I got sick with Ebola and I was sent into the isolation room with the other people that were ill with me, we only had one infectious disease specialist who was taking care of us the first week and he was a foreigner,” Okoli said.

She remained confident and prayed throughout her ordeal until she was declared Ebola-free after 14 days, she said. She later traveled to New Orleans in November 2014 to share her experience with attendees at the annual conference for the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Public Health. Gates was the keynote speaker at the event, and Okoli said she felt he would be interested “to hear a survivor’s point of view.”

Tulane faculty encouraged Okoli to apply to the School of Public Health before she returned to Nigeria after the conference, she said. Three weeks after her return home, she said Gates’ office also asked her if he could publish her story online. Her essay on her experience remains on his website to this day.

Okoli said she learned by phone a few weeks ago that Gates planned to feature her in Time. A video crew went to Tulane to shoot a video about her in September, when her parents back in Nigeria became aware of her recognition, according to a university news release. Okoli said she is “pretty excited” about the honor.

“I honestly never dreamt in my life that I would be honored in this way and I just want to do my best to impact the lives of people. If your life doesn’t matter in that way, then it’s really a waste,” she said.

Okoli is currently in her second year of studying for a Master’s degree in Infectious Disease Epidemiology. She said she is learning about outbreak prevention and containment, the resources needed for prevention, and the various angles of an outbreak related to the community, government and socioeconomic factors. She stressed that her experience with Ebola “opened my eyes to the human angle of illness.”

“I realized it’s so easy to not really know what the patient is feeling,” she said. “So I’m more empathic. It really did open my eyes to the fact that infectious disease is a disease of poverty, and countries that have very limited resources are not able to contain the diseases quickly,” she said.

Determined to return to Nigeria to help prevent future outbreaks of disease, Okoli said she wants to understand why some people survive diseases while others don’t. She said Tulane “is one of the best places globally with a focus on developing countries,” which is why she decided to study at the institution.

“We don’t have a lot of infectious disease specialists in Nigeria who know what to do when this sort of thing happens, which is dangerous. I believe that clinical medicine and epidemiology can be married. I believe that when you see patients and you’re able to treat an infectious disease, you should be able to do research on why it’s happening,” she said.

Tulane stated Okoli is set to complete her studies in May. The mother of one 2-year-old daughter advised aspiring doctors to enter the infectious disease field only if they want to help people.

“Medicine really is service to humanity,” she said. “At the end of the day, you really don’t get as much accolades and thanks as you deserve, but it’s service to God and service to humanity.”

“It’s not as lucrative in terms of moneymaking as other surgical professions, (so you) go into it because you want to help people,” she added.