From WSJ

Ada Igonoh, a 28-year-old physician in Lagos, Nigeria, was checking on a newly hospitalized patient when she noticed his bag of intravenous fluid lying beside him. She picked it up with her bare hands and hung it back on the stand. She thinks she may then inadvertently have touched her mouth, eyes or part of her nose before washing her hands.

That moment in July was the likely start of an ordeal that would land Dr. Igonoh in a dirty, frightening isolation ward, where she fought for two weeks to survive Ebola, watching two women next to her die.

The patient she was caring for, Patrick Sawyer, had arrived sick from Liberia but denied he had had any contact with anyone with Ebola. So the hospital treated him for malaria for two days until it suspected otherwise. Doctors and nurses immediately put on hazmat suits. By then, it was too late. Dr. Igonoh, as well as some of her colleagues, were infected.

Nigeria eventually managed to contain the outbreak of Ebola launched from Mr. Sawyer. Nineteen people eventually contracted the disease, seven of whom died. The outbreak was the most significant this year yet outside of three countries in West Africa, where the disease has claimed more than 5,100 lives.

Dr. Igonoh’s story shows how Nigeria’s health-care system was initially caught off guard before the proper procedures were put in place to prevent further spread. Her tale also shows what it’s like to struggle through the disease in some of the darkest of conditions, worlds away from the high-tech isolation units where U.S. patients have been treated, with round-the-clock staff and advanced care such as dialysis and ventilators.

Read more at WSJ