For some time now our friend had a condition and as they say in the trade, it was becoming chronic and incapacitating. From time to time he would feel the world was whirling around him. At such moments he needed to hold on to something so that he doesn’t drop off the world!
At some other times, it would seem like his bed was on its side with him sliding down the seven foot height. Once he was waiting by the side of a car when the whole world dragged along towards the right. He had to cling to it not to be dragged away.
From time to time his doctors would give him medication that seemed to make his condition worst. Another doctor recommends that he half the medication he was taking. So every morning he splinters the tablet and swallow the half. After some time he stopped taking the tablet. It was too much medication that caused the dizziness and world slipping away, wanting to leave him behind.
What causes it? What cures it? Two basic questions that all medical researchers must ask themselves. What causes our friends condition was not over-medication or latest medication where there was a different reaction to another medication. What was responsible for his dizziness were two – the genes he inherited from his parents and the environment in which he lived.
The parents have both passed. The father had died while they were two young to care for whoever took care of them, mother or father. As long as there was care. In later life, they thank the mother for devoting her life to them and wished the partner had been alive to also provide her company.
How do you provide the medical record about people born and living in the first decades of the 20th century? One day at chance government inoculation opportunity and the next day at the local babaláwo for an internal condition that needs àgbogidi to handle. So, there was no record to consult except family gossip and remembered anecdotes which lack specifics. He was healthy until one day he just collapsed, not far away from his cocoa farms.
As for the mother, she was a thorough going workaholic. She never stopped looking after the farms her husband left behind for her and the children. In later life she developed high blood pressure and had a stroke. There were no genetic reading then and so once again we have to depend on family gossip and fable of woman who was like a man, àdàbà who fiests in the midst of eagles, a special bird he openly flaunts her energy. Praise poetry worked at that point in historical, but now you can’t take it to the bank.
Google’s further revelation were disturbing as what you thought was a small matter of occasional misstep and tumble before you know what is happening, revealed that this was a death call simply giving indications of how soon it is coming. If you still want to keep death at a distance what to do?
It was then the headline punched him in the face: A Cure Does Not Exist!
The initial reaction is surprise and concern. After all, we pray never to be afflicted by a disease that has no cure, in Jesus name. God is not a god of cruelty. God would not torment human beings with an illness without cure. The balance of nature admits of illness and cure – spiritual, herbal and chemical. So, we cannot lose hope and accept such an idea that a disease has no cure.
All through human history, there have been times when sudden diseases have appeared to challenge medicine, medical experts and itinerant mendicants. The most recent example is HIV-AIDS. Today the disease has been down by medical research and thousands of trials and errors.
Perhaps more directly related to us is the case of malaria. This is the most devastating disease in our region of the world. The statistics of its debilitation effect on our lives. There was a tune in the old days when teachers and pupils will report at school tired and drowsy. Colleagues would ask: Weytin dey do you? And they would respond: General Debility! General Debility!
Yet our contribution to the solution of the effects of malaria is minimal in spite of including tropical medicine in our medical training programmes in our various universities.Of course, we cannot even think of such a thing as impossibility where God is concerned. God knows all things and all problems and all the solutions to all things. No wonder that many believers flock to churches and mosques and shrines for spiritual participation or even total take over of their condition. Medical research is always behind medical need. Because it is slow people take risks and accept whatever medication they are offered.
What about a laughing response to this statement, A cure does not exist! They laugh and say that the statement is not about any individual. It is speaking of the illness and disease affecting Nigeria as having no cure. It is a rare disease and it is only available in Nigeria. And since what is in our sight is not in our vision, we ourselves have not attempted to seek medication locally. Take down all the visions stated in our universities and ask yourself which speaks to what is in our sight, what we see everyday, what afflictions belong to us exclusively. The laughter is loud when we remember that scenarios in one of Fagunwa’s where illnesses and afflictions are offered for sale. And our people in their numbers coming buying them in their thousands and even millions! Capitalism!, an illness which cannot be cured by the originators of this affliction. This foreign purchase does not fulfill both our social needs as well as our financial needs as esusu does.
Another item for sale, which we buy into is democracy! When we buy into it we did not look into the problem of the vote of Alafin of Oyo, the Sultan of Sokoto, and the Amayanabo of the empire of the Urhobos should be equal to that of penniless labourer in the streets of Lagos. That disease democracy is for the poor, not for the rich. And the rich will do everything to stop the disease from being cured. Not because there is no cure but because we don’t feel like curing it. Which is different from a case of a cure does not exist.
bankole.omotoso@elizadeuniversity.edu.ng
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