SAD: Late Nigerian Nurse Met Sawyer On First Day At Work — Sister Reveals

Late nurse Justina Obioma Ejelonu, who died on August 14 was one of the nurses who came in contact with late Patrick Sawyer.

Late nurse Justina Obioma Ejelonu

In an interview with Punch, her sister revealed that Justina made contact with Sawyer on her first day at work.

She said:

“The day she met the infected Liberian was her first day at work at that hospital. She just got that job. She was the one that called me and ‘gisted’ me about Ebola and told us how she met and attended to Patrick Sawyer. Later on, she told me she was having fever. I asked her to go back to the hospital so that she would be tested and she did so that night. She was moved back into the hospital that night as she started throwing up and I kept in touch with her until the last day.

“I spoke to Obioma three days ago (Wednesday) and she said, 'My sister, I am better now. Don’t worry, I am okay.’ I felt she was doing better. I didn’t know she was going to die.

“It was through Facebook that I got to know that my sister was dead. Nobody from the state government called us. Nobody from where she worked called us either. It was from blogs on the Internet that I heard the story.”

She said they are being stigmatized following the tragedy which befell her sister.

"We have been stigmatised. Some people called some of my colleagues in the office and told them my sister, Obioma, was the one that came down to Enugu. They said she ran to her sister’s house in Trans Ekulu and also mentioned my office name, Women for Women International.

She also denied rumours that her sister traveled to Enugu where she spreaded the virus.

“Apart from that, my parents are also being stigmatized. The story going round in the village is that my parents came to Lagos to see Obioma and contracted the disease as well. My parents have been staying with me. I invited my father to come over to Enugu when this story about a nurse being infected with EVD broke on the internet.

“My sister knew the implication. She was a nurse. She mistakenly and ignorantly got infected and she knew the disease was deadly. There was no way she would have run to us in Enugu, knowing that the disease is highly contagious. Once bitten, twice shy. She wouldn’t have wanted us to get infected. That is why I am saddened with this rumour that she came to see me in Enugu."

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