The First Service in my church on Sunday is tagged “Empowerment Service’, where issues like entrepreneurship, academics, health, wealth, purpose, etc, are addressed. Last Sunday’s Empowerment Service was on health and it was a revealing and enlightening experience for most of us who were present at the service. The speaker at the programme, a medical doctor, spoke on the deadliness of Hepatitis infection and its prevalence in Nigeria. So, I am using this platform to present some of the things I gleaned from the talk.
A staggering revelation the speaker made was that Hepatitis infection is deadlier than HIV and costlier to manage. Hepatitis B, he told us, is incurable while Hepatitis C can be treated but can you imagine spending 30,000 naira per week on treatment for 48 consecutive weeks? That should be around 200 dollars per week. Please try to calculate what that amounts to. How many people in Nigeria can afford such a treatment? It is however surprising to know that vaccination for this disease is not supposed to be more than 1000 naira (that should be around 7 dollars) and I want to hazard a guess that many people are not aware of this. What is painful about this disease is the fact it is prevalent in Nigeria and many people are ignorant about it. How many Nigerians have died from Hepatitis infection with the death attributed to something else? How many Nigerian are carrying the virus around now? We may not know. I believe that our society should embark on an aggressive drive to sensitise and vaccinate people against this deadly disease.
The Hepatitis infection is an inflammation affecting the liver. It can be contagious or non-contagious. It can also be fulminant. I looked up ‘fulminant’ in the dictionary and I got these meanings: coming on suddenly and with great severity; (of a disease or symptom) severe and sudden in onset. This means Hepatitis infection can come upon one suddenly with very severe effects. Some cases of Hepatitis infection may give you signs, some may not. There are different types of Hepatitis: A, B, C, D and E. Some of the symptoms of Hepatitis infection are: passage of dark urine, yellowing of the eyes (jaundice), abdominal discomfort on the right side, weight loss, easy bruising, bleeding tendencies, swelling, and it can be contacted through blood transfusion, sex, seminal fluids, etc.
My advice to you is to go for Hepatitis test, if you have done that. And if you test negative, please go for vaccination against this disease. If you test positive, please seek medical advice immediately. I have done the test and I have been vaccinated.
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