How to protect yourself from rising cases of malaria, others

What do you think causes the rising cases of these illnesses? Obviously, malaria is endemic in Nigeria and Africa as whole because of our environment. The issue of environmental cleanliness, stagnant water, stagnant gutter here and there, not using insecticide treated net all make people vulnerable such that when people come to the hospital  with […]

What do you think causes the rising cases of these illnesses?

Obviously, malaria is endemic in Nigeria and Africa as whole because of our environment. The issue of environmental cleanliness, stagnant water, stagnant gutter here and there, not using insecticide treated net all make people vulnerable such that when people come to the hospital  with fever you think of malaria first before any other thing. 

For hypertension and diabetes, with the situation of things now in the country, even people who were not hypertensive before become hypertensive , and those who were hypertensive cannot afford drugs again, so you discover that it is now lingering on and it becomes a chronic issue.

Also there is the increasing cost of drugs for these diseases and, even the cost of malaria drugs, people cannot afford them.

The main issue also is the noncompliance with medication, and so , people come here with crises, there  are some people we admitted during the camp because of diabetes, crisis of hypertension, some of them are still in the ward. 

We attended to about 75 -80  people daily during the health camp and that is over 1000 people benefitted  in the course of the 15 days. They came  from Port Hacourt, Lagos, Benue, and residents of Abuja too.

Many people complain of taking malaria drugs without relief these days, what is causing the resistance?

Yes, there are resistance cases of malaria and that is because some treatments has changed over time, now we use what we call Artemisinin based Combination Therapy (ACTs) and even with ACT, we have discovered that malaria is getting resistance to it.

Secondly, most people don’t complete their doses of treatment.  They ought to take this for three days, and because of some of the side effects some people will just take and when they get better, they stop. When you don’t complete the treatment, you are driving the parasite into the liver and in two-three weeks, they come out again and they start causing trouble. 

Coupled with so many social factors, like stress. When you are depressed, the social economy is so low, when you are not eating well, or you are not eating right then, malaria will thrive. 

The body is prone to having normal immunity but when the immunity chains breaks down, then the person is prone to having malaria repeatedly and cost of treatment too, that is if you don’t take the right drug, in the right dose, in the right proportion, and at the right time, then there is a resistance to malaria. 

So when you don’t treat malaria on time it multiplies, the malaria parasite hides in the liver, so when you don’t treat them properly, the parasite goes back to hide in the blood system, in the bone marrow in the liver and when the effect of the drug you have taken goes down, it will start multiplying.

From your observation during this camp what is your advise on tackling the menace?

People should seek help, care early enough for whatever you think is wrong with you whether malaria, headache, body pain,  accident , or any ailment. 

You need to seek care early enough so that we can treat it on time. These problems could be corrected early before damages are done, because if you don’t come early, so many other things could have happened so that what could have been for you as an outpatient, you  may end up being admitted for it. 

Secondly, we need to keep our environment clean and tidy. We need to eat right, we need to exercise and rest these are some of what will make you to live right, to live well, and to live healthy. 

Some of us don’t sleep until 12 midnight and we sleep for 3-4hours, that’s not good enough for the system and that breaks down your immunity, and you are exposed to slight infection, ordinary cold can knock the person up when the immunities are down.

 What inspired the free health camp? 

It is a demonstration of the hospital’s corporate social responsibility  to the community and its environment at large and also to afford people the opportunity to know the level of service we have. Our team of medical experts are directly  available for anybody to access. 

During the camp we demonstrated our state of the earth facilities to patient like physiotherapy, radiological services such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging and CT Scan, and all the rest which people don’t know we have . 

Our dialyses unit has about six dialyses machines which most hospitals cannot afford and we separate our dialyses for example for those who  are infected by HIV or any other disease, you don’t use the same machine with those who are normal, or those who are not infected. 

Some people now take herbs for malaria instead of drugs?

Yes, drugs comes from herbs but the issue is what is the dose of the herbs you are taking? Is that herb not going to be toxic to the liver? We don’t have two livers, we only have one, and the moment the liver is damaged, it is almost irreversible. Liver transplant will cost you more than N12million and the average Nigerian may not be able to afford liver transplant.

 So it is better to avoid it. If you are taking herbs, be sure of what you are taking because the damage it causes you cannot be quantified  if sit cuts to the liver, and kidney, and these are two vital organs that most of the things we take by mouth  pass through to get properly utilized in the body. 

So you must be careful, because whatever you take by mouth is being converted to the active or useful part by the liver and the kidney. Kidneys will excrete it. If you take paracetamol it moves to the liver, it is the liver that coverts it to the active form to cause pain and fever to come down, so if you keep insulting the liver it translate the insult and that’s why you see that liver failure is getting common, kidney failure is now getting common because some of the extra things we take that we cannot quantify what they contain and the dose that’s are toxic to the system.