Nigeria may have been declared officially Ebola-free but at the First Consultants Hospital in Lagos, doctors believe it’ll take the facility that treated the first victim years to recover.

The 40-bed private clinic in the bustling Obalende area of the city paid a high price in the outbreak, after the first patient with the Ebola virus was admitted on July 20. Not only has it taken a financial hit from having to replace every piece of potentially contaminated equipment but it also suffered the human loss of much-respected staff with decades of expertise.

“The most precious equipment in a hospital are the people. I lost four of my most important staff,” medical director Benjamin Ohiaeri told AFP. “In the midst of this celebration (about Nigeria’s Ebola-free status), people died… and it’s because of them that this place is a safer place today.”

Liberian finance ministry official Patrick Sawyer was brought to First Consultants on July 20 and died five days later, sparking fear about its spread through Africa’s most populous nation.

Effective leadership and co-ordination were key to defying naysayers who feared the country, with its under-funded and ill-equipped public healthcare system, would struggle to cope.

For Ohiaeri, the most credit should go to Stella Adadevoh, his most senior doctor and the person he had expected to take charge after his planned retirement next year.

Adadevoh physically stopped Sawyer from leaving, despite pressure from Liberia, preventing potentially thousands of people in crowded Obalende and beyond from becoming infected.

“He didn’t want to be treated. He pulled off his drip, he made sure that blood was everywhere, he did all kinds of things that were unspeakable and that’s when people got infected,” Ohiaeri said.

Ohiaeri lamented the loss of  Dr. Adadevoh, saying that, “She had been working with us for 21 years, one of the most brilliant physicians you’d have ever met. Humble, diligent, brilliant, I had always trusted her,… How do you replace someone like that?”

After Sawyer’s death, the entire hospital had to be decontaminated and every piece of equipment, from the emergency room and laboratory to washing machines in the laundry, had to be replaced.

The clinic, which the US-trained Ohiaeri founded in 1982, was shut for two months, running up losses into the millions of dollars.