‘Young shall grow’ so the saying goes, but a quick addition to that should have been, ‘if they survive’. Yes,young shall grow if and only if they survive the rigors of growth and development through the stages of life. It is also apt to add that growing is not just important as growing well and growing very well.
The World Health Organisation, WHO as well as its arm-United Nations Children Emergency Fund, UNICEF have developed standard measures and criteria to grade and monitor this growth and development especially in children. However, Nigeria along with other developing have fared so poorly in this regard. Even the figures often quoted cannot be taken hook line and sinker.
Many thanks to our friends; donor agencies and individuals from across the world who have constantly been there for us to ensure that we move up from this precarious situation. I therefore think it is left more to us, to tidy our end and play our own role effectively as individuals, groups or government as it were.
Talking about groups, we have so many of them around based on certain common factors; religion, tribe, social status, occupation, just name it, we have them in numbers. The big question however is, how do they influence us positively? Or negatively? Permit me to be biased here, have we ever considered these groups as veritable means of passing across salient PUBLIC HEALTH information? Do we see it as a possibility? Have you ever been caught in any of these groups with such useful information, campaign or orientation as the case may be?
A drift away from the role distribution. Let’s share the case in point.
I met this child, less than 3 yrs of age first in the isolation room of the Children emergency.
Isolation room, as the name suggests is a room where we keep children with rapidly communicable/infectious disease away from other children.
The child was taking in artificial oxygen via a tube connected to the Oxygen cylinder and passed into her nostrils.
She was breathless and restless. She has numerous dark spots all over her body. She was semi conscious with her eyes shut, not because she is asleep but because she just helplessly couldn’t open them. She isn’t dead either, at least not yet.
She had presented the day before with a history(in medical parlance) of cough,catarrh,fever and rash of two week duration. Mother had geniusely made a diagnosis of Measles in this child and had been managing her child at home with herbal concoction (agbo) which she force-feeds the child and bath her with.
She had been sternly warned by friends and neighbours that measles patients must not be taken to the hospital, they are best managed at home.
By the time she presented at the Children Emergency, the child has developed bronchopneumonia(a super-imposing medical condition) and she is currently unconscious.
The child I saw was lying helplessly, unconscious, very weak with numerous dark spots all over the skin. The lips had numerous blisters which could have been from a probable insertion of spoon and other metallic materials when the child lost consciousness.
We tried our best, doctors and nurses, but after 3 days of admission, the most unfortunate happened, we lost this poor two-year old child.
Most worrisome of this whole story is the fact this child died of a disease that could have been prevented by merely volunteering the child for immunisation.
While I am not going to absolutely campaign for the politically-influenced, poorly managed, free and mobile door-to-door immunisation. The one administered by people of questionable skill (as long as they belong to the ruling party). The one whose vaccine-potency is questionable concerning the way and manner these vaccines are preserved. Yes, we see them on certain days (and the plus days) carrying boxes on their shoulders, some of them in tartarred aprons, signifying them as ‘injectors’ or do we call them vaccinator?
However, I still feel strongly that availing the child of such an opportunity would have been a better idea. There are various other options to being adequately immunised according to the immunisation schedule, they are not expensive, they are readily available (I believe) but the lackadaisical attitudes of many Nigerian mothers to the health of their children is quite disheartening.
I wonder if they forget so quickly, the pain they went through in pregnancy, at labour, backing the child at infancy and so on. I still find it hard to understand why such simple, absolutely essential health measures such as Immunisation would be taken for granted to the extent of losing a whole precious child.
Measles is a vaccine-preventable disease, in fact, it can be eradicated completely reason being that man is the only known reservoir so all we need to do is stop the spread in man.
However, in Nigeria, we have failed to do what is right. Now within one month, I have seen four children coming down with measles, leaving 2 dead, 1 left with the very likely possibility of being blind (for life) and the other still on admission, the fate not yet decided.
I must also not fail to chastise the mother for leaving the care of her child to hear-says and rumours from friends and neighbours who apparently are not skilled medical personnels.
Nigeria and Nigerians will get there one day, may be sooner than later depending on how we want it as individuals, as groups, and as government.
