Now that our own flu and malaria season is here (II)

We should be thankful that somehow, even in spite of the spike, Nigerians are not dying like flies as predicted and we are not abandoning cadavers by the roadsides.

However, the situation is getting scarier by the day all over the country and people are afraid for good reason. I reiterate that we have been partly saved due to:

1. The fact that Nigerians self-medicate. The high rates of deaths in the USA and Europe is because their system is structured and so many drugs are only available by prescription. The people thus became lab rats in the hands of a scared and confused public health system. In the ‘developed’ countries, there is total reliance on the health systems. Here, we know we have no health system, so our personal responses to health issues are brisker. Someone should write a PhD dissertation on this.
2. Nigeria and many parts of Africa have been used to diseases such as Malaria, which bears strong affinity with the symptoms of COVID-19. It is still down to fevers, flu and the likes. The usual protocol here is a mishmash of drugs ranging from Chloroquine to Artesunate, antibiotics and vitamins. The very sterilized developed countries have seen themselves scrambling to know what to do. The protocol for COVID-19 treatment in Nigeria revolves around these anti-malarial drugs. It may not be specific to the virus, but it has saved a great many people.
3. Local remedies do work sometimes. The point is, millions of our people have no choice. Millions have never been to hospital anyway, and so their standard treatment is down to the usual leaves and roots. Agbo and dogonyaro leaves, tree barks and alcoholic mixtures all come in handy, and as much as it can be stated that some have died while using these local protocols, indeed many have also been saved and have thus developed some herd immunity. There was always a racist undertone to this disease when it started anyway. It was like no solution could come out of Africa. We agonized over this for a while and let it go. The quarrel I had with the whole singular lockdown and vaccine approach is that they seemed to have a preconceived agenda that wasn’t based on science. Never has mankind attempted to lockdown with a view to killing a new virus of which it knows very little, in the debit year. Also the corollary effects of a hard lockdown – destroyed lives and businesses, destroyed livelihoods, mental problems (as is now becoming obvious with surging rape cases and suicides) were conveniently ignored by eggheads who should know better. It was all so pathetic!

Let me leave it at that. As Nigeria’s malaria and flu season peaks below are the issues we should take note of:

1. We have not repositioned primary health care in Nigeria. Recent visits to hospitals in Abuja here showed me that the less regarded ones cannot even afford hand sanitizers for visitors and patients. Many of our hospitals are infection centres. You visit at your own risk. There is a need to direct government attention to this issue.
2. Related to the above is that as we knew all along, our covid fight will have to start from the community level. Our cultures are interactive but also some of our excesses can make the virus spread so easily. If a carrier of the virus came to Nigeria anytime between December and March when this was not seen as a big deal even by the WHO, the excessive interaction of our immigration officers, customs officers and the hordes of hustlers at our airports means that this virus has spread far. We should already have started waiting for the virus at the community level. If hospitals – private and public – are freaking out and rejecting patients, it is because there is no agreed protocol. A protocol for treatment must be established and disseminated
3. COVID-19 is being treated with a stigma. But it is just a flu. For now, because of the marketing of the disease with fear and trepidation, hospitals treat people with symptoms like they treated HIV/AIDS patients back in the days. Trust Nigerians and hysteria. We see evil where there is none. Patients are even being punished in some places. Only isolation centres show some dignity to sufferers.
4. Isolation centres also have their own problems. Apart from the ones manned by NCDC, the rest now have a reputation as death centres where people are simply abandoned. Now, imagine someone gets to a hospital with underlying illnesses, say a kidney or liver problem. If such a person is taken into isolation, there is no focus on their underlying disease. If the doctors in such a hospital are proactive at all, the best they do is chase covid. The underlying then dispatches the patient. This is why casualties are mounting everywhere. Isolation centres are only about covid, and nothing else. Our isolation centres are not like what we see abroad, where competent medical personnel are on ground and ready to administer comprehensive healthcare to patients (even though they still lost a lot of people for reasons stated above).
5. Reinfections – This is a major issue as the science is yet unclear. This should worry the Nigerian government just in case people can get reinfected after they heal. It is highly likely though, because flus do come seasonally. So this emphasizes the need for readiness at the community level all over.

All said, we need to be vigilant at this point. We need to brace up for herd impact and immunity.

We need to be watchful of medical personnel (doctors, nurses and other officials), who also need a lot of support and recognition from government, in order to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and deliver for the country at this moment.

I believe that this season will be over, and the worst of the gruesome projections will not come to pass.