Perils of drug hawking
The drug hawking menace has many dimensions ranging from illiterate people hawking expired and fake drugs in streets and market places under the blazing sun. Unfortunately quackery is not limited to hawkers only but to people opening patent medicine stores and committing all sort of unorthodox practices like unsafe injections, criminal abortions and unnecessary infusions […]
The drug hawking menace has many dimensions ranging from illiterate people hawking expired and fake drugs in streets and market places under the blazing sun. Unfortunately quackery is not limited to hawkers only but to people opening patent medicine stores and committing all sort of unorthodox practices like unsafe injections, criminal abortions and unnecessary infusions of intravenous fluids.
These people are the drivers of drug abuse in Nigeria. They prescribe and sell everything; from Antibiotics to Analgesics. Unfortunately they are in every market and street in the country. Poor healthcare policy/system, lack of accountability and the knowledge that there’s little deterrent encourages these people to take risks to enrich themselves. Young people need education and something positive to occupy them. Some need help for mental health issues.
No doubt, the experience enriched my perception when a Peadiatric patient was brought to a Federal Medical Centre and diagnosed as having Respiratory Tract Infection. The Doctor prescribed Cefuroxime to be compounded, a drug used to treat RTI for her. She went to the hospital pharmacy where she was told that the drug is out-of-stock. She later in the evening went to a nearby patent medicine store where the shop keeper ignorantly gave a wrong dose (overdose), she was rushed to the FMC comatosely with a severe diarrhea and admitted. These are a reflection of what happens every day in many towns in Nigeria.
Greediness and avarice have become our norms now. A patent medicine chemist is supposed to sell over- the- counter drugs [drugs that do not need prescription from a Doctor], he will go ahead selling prescription -only drugs because he want to make cheap and quick money.
In plain language, greed for money. And we’re fast becoming a nation without a standard of ethical behaviour. Only money matters.
Unrestrained greed and its attendant incompetence has diminished us as a people that we now not only sell prescription drugs but antibiotics in an online business selling store. I saw today “Augmentin” in one of our largest online stores when we’re now facing the challenge of antibiotics resistance. We have pushed ourselves into undeserved humiliation.
And who is to be blame? Where have all the professionals gone? Regulatory bodies? We must not look for someone to blame. For, we are all blameworthy. Each and every one. The leadership, I must admit, is much more culpable. But to focus on the leadership as the singular issue is to like prescribe an anti-bacterial drug for a patient with both bacterial and fungal infections. He will remain in ill-health. A thorough diagnosis is necessary for a curing prescription.
The horrifying truth is that, paucity of health education has led our people to seek for remedy from traditional healers and drug hawkers. We need to enlighten our people more on the dangers of these drugs and concoctions, and people should also develop better health seeking behaviours like presenting early to hospital when they are sick, having regular medical check-ups, regular antenatal visits by pregnant women and prompt immunization of children. A regulatory body should be established to monitor the activities of traditional healers, so as to make their practice more scientific. All drug hawking should be banned.
We know that many of these concoctions are toxic to vital organs like the liver and kidneys. Equally harmful, is the practice of hawking orthodox drugs by illiterates in baskets under the blazing sun. It is the duty of government, professional bodies and all members of the society to ensure that people are saved from untimely deaths and trauma inflicted on them by the menace of drug hawkers and patent drugs sellers.
Yusuf Hassan Wada, Sokoto