By Adeola Agoro
I remember about six years ago, I was involved in the home care management of a dear mother image who had cancer.
I was of the view that her case needed to be properly managed in the hospital. I was fighting against the views of one of her children who reasoned that ‘owo aye’ (hands of the evil ones) was the cause of the sickness and chose to treat her with all sorts of prayers, herbs etc.
Out of desperation to ease her of her pains, I said, “Let doctors handle her case. If she dies, you will know that you tried your best and if she survives, you will know that you took the right decision. Whatever happens, it is 50/50 as against the shame that may come with herbs and prayers and not giving her the best medical care available.”
I got a nurse who was coming to check her at home when all efforts to make them get her to the hospital failed.
Her children got herbs and prayers from different angles. In fact, at a stage, they saw a hypnotist who removed pins and cockroaches from their mother and was able to convince them through that that she was in a cult without knowing.
They moved her from one spiritual place to the other and caused her untold pains. Meanwhile, the spiritialists made a lot of money from them.
One day, she went into a coma and she died. So sad. Would she have survived if medical doctors had been given the chance to take care of her?
Maybe not.
Cancer is cancer. Except it goes into remission, it will still kill the victims anyway. But it would be said that those with the duty to take care of the sick person tried their best.
It is the same with the Covid-19 vaccine. A lot of people have refused to be volunteers for the vaccine.
Agreed, Chinese people made a mistake in the first place by saying they wanted to start the testing on Africans.
That was so, so wrong. They shouldn’t have said that. It was like taking African as guinea pigs. Which race with dignity would take that? It would have been enough to say they wanted to test it around the world and on people of all races. That would have settled it without controversies.
The matter on testing it on Africans has died down with time. Not only that, volunteers have come from the UK and from no other place than Oxford University! Not only that, days the vaccine was tested on volunteers, they are doing fine. If they were Nigerians, they would have been eating pounded yam and drinking plamwine by now, showing how well they are.
So, what’s stopping us from getting the vaccine administered on us? Seriously, I see no reason.
The person who will die will die whether he runs away from the vaccine or not, so why not take it and know that he has given himself the best protection available instead of allowing himself to suffer running away from it?
Let us embrace what works for our health and stop chasing what will not.
– Adeola Agoro is an author, a journalist and a photo studio owner in Abuja, Nigeria.