“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” Gilbert and Sullivan’s well-known conclusion from the Pirates of Penzance clearly applies to physicians as well – globally The reasons are well known. Government, Private hospitals and insurance company edicts on how to treat patients, declining reimbursements, ever increasing costs to run a practice, endless paperwork requirements, constant time pressures and a hostile legal environment all combine to make the modern day physician’s lot a truly unhappy one of operatic proportions. The impact of declining government-run health care has dis-empowered physicians, leaving them disillusioned.

Nairobi is rife with entertainment spots and night life. One only needs some excuse to party, and there are lots of places catering for all sorts of budgets. Few stop to think about potential health effects of hard partying.Binge drinking is the extreme, and is defined as taking lots of alcoholic drinks in a very short period of time, or with the aim to get drunk. There is no such thing as completely safe drinking, but research has defined relatively safe alcoholic levels beyond which untoward health effects increase exponentially.

For the world and all of us there is one consolation: the knowledge that while Ebola may have killed Dr Stella Adadevoh, she in turn may have stopped it killing thousands or even millions of other Nigerians. Dr Stella Adadevoh, was not a virology or public-health expert, simply a duty consultant at the First Consultant Hospital, a private clinic in Lagos. It was her sharp-eyed diagnosis, however, that identified Nigeria’s first case of the virus – a 40-year-old civil servant called Patrick Sawyer, who flew in to Lagos from Ebola-devastated Liberia in July.