My sister is a nurse, I have always wanted to do this post but has been postponing it. But something happened some 4 days ago. A friend of ours died of high blood sugar. She’s just 25 and recently finished her NYSC. Many of us were unhappy because this death could have been averted. All that made my sister advising that we should take care of our health. Not every time we blame the devil but we are the cause of our misfortune. So I am doing this so we all can be careful, learn so we can live a better life. Here are seven (7) ways Nigerians and the health care system are killing themselves. Wrong diagnosis : This is general problem but in the case of Nigerian doctors and hospitals they get away with it easily. Few years ago a 5 year old boy was diagnose of HIV. Na so them begin treat this small pikin for about 1 year and the child was not getting better. Not until they went to another hospital and they found out it was just malaria parasites. Thank God the child has grown stronger. And the first hospital that diagnosed the child for HIV is University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) Wrong diagnosis has killed so many Nigerians and still killing. Inability of patients to Confirm diagnosis in another hospital : Nigerian health care system is boring, poor and the Government is not willing to do much. Please try and confirm diagnosis from 2 or 3 different hospitals before concluding. Na so Federal medical center for Asaba (FMC) diagnose my aunty of tumor in her leg. The leg was seriously swollen and paining her. The drugs given to her was not working and she couldn’t go to work or move for 3 weeks. Not until my sister who is a nurse asked her to run another test in another hospital for another ailment which she did and they discovered it was just a slight ailment which they began the treatment. Now she’s alright now and has resumed work. If you are diagnose of any ailment in a hospital, try and run another test in another hospital to confirm. Wrong prescription : Many people have died of wrong prescription. Treating Typhoid fever with tuberculosis drugs. We have heard of many cases where drugs prescribed by doctors to patients end up damaging and causing internal problems for the patient. Self-medication : In as much sometimes self-medication could be cheaper and helpful, there are times it brings about damage that cannot be able to reverse. Am sure some of us have heard cases of people who had an ailment, they refused going to the hospital, rather opt to self-medicate and end up hurting their health. If you are sick or you notice any form of symptoms, abeg waka go hospital. Carelessness and Carefree Attitude : So many of us are so carefree with our health that we don’t care what goes into our mouths and stomachs. The lady friend i mentioned earlier that died. She had been told by doctor that she was diabetic. According to what I learnt, she rarely goes for checkup, no medication, she eats any damn food and she’s fat. Her blood sugar even rose to 500 according to test few minutes before her death. We all need to be conscious of our health and what goes into our system. Nigerian Poor Health Care System : We all will agree that we don’t have a good health care system. Most of our politicians don’t treat themselves here in Nigeria. They go abroad to do so. So na we ordinary Nigerians go dey use the system. In most developed countries, it’s a rare case to hear that a woman died while delivering. But in Nigeria it’s just so common. When a woman is about to deliver, na so fear go dey catch everybody for the family. Nigeria has a very poor health care system. Poor emergency handling : Nigerian hospitals, doctors are too slow, poor in handling emergency cases. A patient who is dying is brought into the hospital, sometimes it will even take hours them to start treating the patient. Sometimes the patient sef go don die sef before them go respond. For Christ sake this is an emergency situation, attend to patients fast. Presently, the family of the lady that died of high blood sugar are trying to sue the doctor of the first hospital they took her to. The late girl was still alive for some hours when they took her there. I don’t know how they said it that the doctor was unable to attend to her. Nigerian doctors and hospitals should attend to emergency cases with swift and emergency.

Wonderful write-up.

But a punctuation here and a comma there could make this piece a beauty to behold.

Just saying!