SHORTCHANGED: A RANT Q83:1-17

I am not in my happy place. I tried to avoid writing because I am not in the best of moods but if I do not write it and set it free, it will keep sitting like a log on my heart making me unable to sleep.

My baby is ill again – with the same illness I treated about two weeks ago – because of fake/substandard drugs!

There is so much anger/sadness/frustration in my heart at the moment. Why do people do this? WHY?

I could rant ‘Why?’ all night long but I would not. Instead, I will share some experiences.

I had a close family member travel abroad and when she fell ill over there, she was given a single medication that had she been given here, she would not have been better unless the drugs were foreign. A cocktail of drugs would probably have been prescribed to restore her health. I really could not believe she was given a single drug which controlled her condition!

image credit: http://www.albanyivf,com

After the crazy Eid day cooking well into the night, I used a foreign brand of acetaminophen (paracetamol) tablets. The next morning, I had no lingering effects from the previous day. I woke up early, bright as a bird! The medication had worked like magic! Trust me, I have used different brands of paracetamol after very stressful days, but none had ever worked like this did.

Same happens when we use medications brought by hujjaj (pilgrims) when they return from Hajj. They work!

Why would our drugs not work? And if they do manage to work, why do the diseases relapse after a few days/weeks? Don’t these evil manufacturers/importers have children or family members of their own?

We have treated many patients in the hospital with the medications listed in the medical books only for the patients to deteriorate or die on us. Money is squandered on useless investigations that should not have been ordered in the first place and on placebo-like medications which should not even be available for sales in pharmacies and on irrelevant autopsies to probe cause of death.

Some doctors have learnt to prescribe only specific brands of drugs – often foreign and above the reach of the average Nigerian. Patients do not buy them because they cannot afford them, or they buy the fake/substandard ones only to have minimal improvement, if any at all. Sometimes, they leave the hospital all together only to get scammed by unorthodox ‘herbal practitioners’ and profit-oriented prayer houses.

It is so frustrating as a doctor and makes patients doubt your competence when you prescribe drugs that do not work! Heck, it makes you doubt your competence! Most significantly, PEOPLE DIE!!!

How can humans be so evil?

Please, say a prayer for my child. May Allah heal him.