Thread by @JeSuisNaija

POVERTY OF THE MIND IS A DISEASE
It is true our healthcare system isn't at its best, but what is it with Nigerians and hesitations about going to hospitals when ill. Fear of injection? These include people with means to private clinics, and others with access to free healthcare.

I havent seen a race that trivialize health symptoms like we do. Every fever is malaria. Artesunate is d most abused medicine after Amoxicillin. I call them bus conductors prescription drugs. An executive who followed his driver's malaria prescription, died of typhoid days later.

I dont have data to back it up, i have a suspicion typhoid is ravaging Lagos currently; based on occurrences of people who died, treating malaria on self medication. It broke my heart when i heard a lady in her 20s gave up the ghost after persistent vomiting. She died of typhoid.

Private clinics in her locality charge N15,000 to treat typhoid. She stopped working for me last year to study. How could i have lost anybody because of N15,000? She's indigent and her parents are struggling. Why tell me when she died, when i wasn't told when she took ill? 😓

Similarly, a lady in her 30s in my constituency passed away due to severe cardiac failure, after an overdose of Diclofenac that she took because of menstrual pain. The number of people purchasing death across the counter is increasing. Can y'all please stop self medication!! 😓

Many of these cheap death cases has to do with complete inaction until it is an emergency. Aside individual lackadaisical attitude, employers' policies on sick leave in Nigeria's private sector is criminal. After a consolidated salary, they dont want to hear it that you are sick.

After a staffer was revived from coma at work, the supervisor said she can't approve employee's sick leave until she has approval that took 3 days from the head office. The sick employee died d day the leave was approved. Employers here are seen as messiah, and are never liable.

Individual and company attitude towards health is a poverty of the mind that has no economic solution. Nonchalance and work pressure is a major reason for this. The worst health center in Lagos is better than a chemist that dispenses prescription drugs without prescription.

One last thing i need to mention, there's a lot of misgivings and misinformation about our public healthcare. Many who haven't entered a public health center in ages have a mindset shaped by false media narratives. Some of d public health services aren't as bad as construed. End