Most people are a resultant of either a circumstance they had encountered in life or what they had acquired from their environment or even both, directly or indirectly. Mine was kind of directly linked to me, I lost a pupil in my class (where I teach children about the gospel). Her name was “Happiness”. She was a smart and bright girl, full of life, she was about 11 years of age. She died due to mis-information and carelessness of her guardian, coupled with the inability to access a health care center due the financial status of her guardian. The guardian of the child was preoccupied with the ideology of consumption of herds and roots known as traditional medicine, for treatment of a sick person. They used this traditional treatment on this child, instead of taking her to the clinic, where she would be properly diagnosed and treated, which resulted to her painful and untimely death. Learning about her demise, and the circumstance she went through before she gave up her ghost, I wondered what could be going the mind of the child and the pain she endured, I wished I would had done something to reverse the situation.
Also, due to the high illiteracy rate in my society, many children may still suffer the plight of ”Happiness’ fate” as these parent/guardians don’t get exposed enough to the right information regarding health matters. Unfortunately, these herds and root vendors exploit these naïve potential customers, they promised them with a one-mixture that cures multiple ailment, which in most case does nothing at all, or will make worse their condition. But in the situation of this late little Happiness, if her guardian has a list of clinics with affordable health care they can access or have a proper orientation of how and when to use traditional herds, perhaps she would still be alive. Not that I am disputing that these traditional medicines don’t work, it is an issue of case-by-case condition. But most of the time, these traditional medicines are administered wrongly, due to the technicality of consuming the right dosage, and how to apply it.
At that point, I decided to saturate myself with the knowledge of how these traditional medicines works, so that at every point in time I have an opportunity to engage with people such like the guardian of late Happiness, I will orientate them on the need of accessing an approved health center rather than doing a self-treatment with traditional medicine. And if there is a need to use the traditional means, it should be an approved one. I will like to go further by proposing a health insurance policy that cover kids within a certain age range, funded by NGO, governments, philanthropists, and any well-meaning individual, such that they will be able to access health care irrespective of their location, or status. I have witnessed lots of things go wrong in my society and feel helpless when nothing can be done to improve the situation. I hope things will turn out better in future with the right dissemination of information and the right things in place to make it work.