Be Alert.
Frankly speaking I think I now understand what my Professor back then in school tried so hard to make us understand. She taught us this while she schooled us on the topic "Epidemiology".
Epidemiology is a brach of science that studies the spread and control of disease. It deals on those strategies that would enhance good disease control.
She said that down here in Africa especial in a developing country like Nigeria, that we have three major problems that affect epidemiological trends. These major problems are: DISEASE, IGNORANCE and POVERTY.
I might not have the time and chance to explain each of them, but I must try to show you how they are linked and then will dwell more on the problem of IGNORANCE.
Every living person here on earth must surely come down with a sickness at one time in life. And this sickness is as a result of a disease, brought by a disease causing agents. One is expected to visit the hospital where trained medical personnel will diagnose and offer proper regimen, when they come down with a sickness.
But poverty has taught our people otherwise, in that they would rather seek for cheap and self medication and at some point would go to commit themselves to the hands of those pathetic patent and traditional "medicine dealers", and to this effect will be brainwashed into accepting a concoction as a medical regimen to their disease and this was done out of ignorance. I believe you can now understand, how a person with a DISEASE had IGNORANTLY resorted to self medication and visited Local medicine dealers due to POVERTY.
Now let me tell us why I believed that ignorance is truly a problem in Epidemiology.
One evening I was coming back from a friend's place. The public transport I took alighted me at a bus stop before the one I was actually meant to stop, I ignored them because I didn't want to create an awful scene with the conductor, and so I had to treck down the remaining distance. As I walked down, of all the sound that filtered through my ears because it was a small market, the one that got my attention was the sound that jarred from the speakers on the roof of one small vehicle🚙.
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It was a local medical vendor who was "educating" his clients. "My brothers and Sisters, Papa and Mama, Ladies and Gentlemen, come and see Stafulococus orus, the germs wey dey render man impotent and woman infertile," those was exactly the words I heard from the man. I was startled.
I suddenly developed the interest to see the magical 'Staphylococcus aureus' which could be seen with our naked eyes. As I got closer, two set of Ansyclostoma duodenel (Hookworms), enclosed in an airtight bottle, sat on the bonnet. Phew! Even a Primary School pupil should know that bacteria cannot be seen with our naked eyes😍 but with the aid of a microscope. I was constantly disappointed with the same similar occasions every now and then. And these are the class of people we confidently go to for a treatment out of ignorance; people who could not distinguish between a parasite and a bacteria.
They would give you a concoction that is suppose to cure you of all your diseases, be it viral, bacteria, fungi or parasitic infections. A medicine that does not have a standard posology. A medicine that has a million number of adverse effect. Little wonder we visit the hospital only when the local drugs must have left us in a critical condition, hoping the hospital to perform a magic on our badly battered livers, kidneys and immune system.
The government should help us by creating awareness of the danger lurking around such medicine vendors and an appropriate bodies should be raised to check for the authenticity of such medicines. And again the wise ones amongst us should educate the ignorant ones whose life we must cherish at all times.
