
Very early this morning, a little after 6:30, we dashed off to see her Pediatrician.
The reason for going so early was to beat the usual Monday morning rush of sick children and their anxious parents, coming to seek treatment for problems which had arisen over the weekend.
I had a lot to do, including a trip to Enugu and back, and my wife had an early meeting in the office.
I was very surprised to find just a handful of parents and children at the place before us. Not more than five.
Initially I thought it was because we had arrived early, but from the time we registered our presence until we saw the doctor, only three more patients came in.
On the way home, I discussed my observations with my wife.
She concurred and said the doctor had also pointed out the situation to her, concluding that people were obviously resorting to self medication due to the hard times.
Her reply reminded me of a bad day I had just before Easter this year which underlined the hazards of self medication on children and anyone else for that matter.
That day I went to see a doctor pal of mine who I had not seen since the new year. When I got to his clinic by a few minutes to five that evening, he told me that he had not seen any patient all day.
A few minutes later, a nurse came to inform him that he had a patient.
I got up and left, but not before joking that I had brought him luck.
When I got to my car, I realised he had forgotten to give me the phone number of the book seller,who had supplied him some of the titles I saw on his book shelf, which he had promised to give me.
I went back and wrote a note, asking for the number, which I told the receptionist to take to him.
Just as I was about to hand over the note somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was my friend. I asked him if he was through already and he told me the child was brought in dead and so there was nothing he could do.
As he walked me to the car, I could hear the child’s mother wailing in the Nurse’s office.
He said from what the father told him,the child had been ill for a few days and they had been treating him at home.
Early that day they decided to take him to a hospital as his condition was not improving.
They had been to two other hospitals before they came to him. Both of them had discharged the child when they could not find a vein or artery to enable them infuse him.
I could see he was quite upset when he told me that the child was such a lovely looking boy and did not have to die like that.
I was disturbed myself and told him that this was why I hated hospitals, too much sadness.
From there I went to see my friend and my lawyer whose office was nearby.
I needed to get the experience with the child out of my mind.
After I told him what I had just seen, he told me there was a similar situation playing out in his mother’s clinic which was on the ground floor of the building his office was in. He said the child was in a coma when he was brought in and that his mother and her staff were battling to revive him. He said he had been surprised to notice that his mother was working later than usual and he had gone to find out why. According to him the child had been ill for a few days and they were “managing” him at home, while running around to raise some money to take him to hospital.
Shortly after we heard people crying and wailing downstairs. The worst had happened.
I got up and drove home ,quite upset , cursing the day and the events I had just witnessed.
We are all lamenting about the hard times, talking about the availability and cost of petrol and the fact that there is no light.
We are screaming about the rising unemployment and the factories or industries that are finding it difficult to stay open.
We are bickering over the budget, positions, limousines and SUV s and fighting a war against corruption that does not appear to be going anywhere.
Have we spared a thought for those people whose children are dying because they cannot afford to raise the between 5- 20,000 naira the children need to see a doctor and get decent medical attention? Recently, I ran into another Doctor, a lady and in my humble opinion an excellent medical practitioner, who was my father’s doctor.
She was looking downcast. I asked her what the matter was. She told me her job was depressing her, that if she could find something else to do, she would have moved on.
I asked her why. She told me too many of her patients were dying. People she knew who could have lived for several more years ,despite their health conditions ,as long as they took their medications.
But, because many of them could not afford to buy the drugs they needed they were dropping dead.
She disclosed that in addition to charging many of them little or no consultation fees, she had also helped them sometimes to acquire their drugs from her own pocket, but it was not enough apparently.
I could appreciate what she was talking about. On many occasions I have paid for drugs for total strangers, who were about to walk out of a pharmacy empty handed because they could not afford the drugs prescribed for them.
Each time it happened, I would tell myself, “He was lucky today, there was someone to help. What would happen on days when there was no help?”.
The long and short of what I am saying is that things have to improve very quickly. People are dying unnecessarily. Needlessly. Many of them because of little sums of money.
The people who are ruling us may not care. They have their doctors and hospitals abroad. Some of them have disclosed that they have been receiving treatment abroad since 1978. Their wives and children are not left out. They probably do not understand that there are people whose beloved children are dying of malaria and other easily treatable conditions because they were not able to raise the ten thousand or so Naira needed to treat them. They did not have it, and they didn’t know how or where to go and raise it.
Nobody can be more bitter than such a person and their numbers are increasing by the day.
We need action. Not excuses, not blames and not apologies.
If things don’t get better soon there will be trouble in the land. Mark my words. People can only endure so much hardship.