Ignorance is an important cause of blindness

Michael had been ill for a few days. He had tried self-medication without any relief. Eventually, he decided to visit the hospital. After consultations, he went to the pharmacy to fill his prescription. The pharmacist handed him a bottle with the instruction, “Take two teaspoonful three times daily before meals.”

As soon as Michael got home, seeing the big dish of pounded yam and “ogbono” soup on the table he forgot all about the medicine and went after the food. Soon he was feeling unwell again; the symptoms returned in full force. Then he remembered he should have taken his medicine before eating. “I’ll take a strong laxative to wash out my bowels and then I can take the medicine,” he said to himself.

Michael would have died from diarrhoea but for the timely intervention of his wife who rushed him to the hospital.

The story of Adie is even more incredible. Adie, a high school student had just had a Chemistry lecture on Acids and Bases (alkali) followed by a practical demonstration of how an acid could be neutralised by a base. So when a younger schoolmate had acid splashed on his face when a car battery exploded while he was helping a visitor to the school, Adie dashed to the Chemistry laboratory to fetch some caustic soda (alkali) to neutralise the acid.

But for the vigilance of the laboratory supervisor, who stopped him, he would have caused some disaster. “How would you know the point of neutrality at which there is neither free acid nor alkali present?,” the supervisor had asked him. “It is impossible on the human body or any surface at all. You would have added to a mild acid burn of the face, a more severe alkali burn – a double jeopardy.

“If the caustic soda had entered the eyes, a total irreversible blindness could have occurred. Water is the thing to use. Just pour ordinary water copiously on his face and eyes,” he further advised.

Mama Sadeh was told she had diabetes. She said it was impossible because she hardly ate sugar. She took her tea and pap with honey so “how can I be passing sugar in my urine?,” she had asked.

Our explanation that even natural honey contained sugar and that all foods whether protein, fat or carbohydrate would eventually be converted by the body to sugar, which is the basic unit of energy in the body, didn’t make sense to her! The problem with eating sugar is that it doesn’t have to undergo the process of conversion and therefore goes directly into the bloodstream causing a rapid increase in the level of blood sugar. Beyond a certain blood level, a person can become unconscious and die.

Patrick had a sudden onset of a painful red eye. “I think I have an infection,” he told himself. He purchased some eye drops from a patent medicine store. After five days, the pain had reduced but his vision was poorer than in the other eye. He, therefore, decided to visit the ophthalmologist. It was found that he had a uveal inflammation – an inflammation of the middle coat of the eye.

Unfortunately, he had now developed some complications owing to the five-day delay in presenting. He would have to live with the aftermath of his folly for the rest of his life.

Mama Tobee gladdened my heart last week. She had had a transient painless loss of vision in an eye on getting out of bed in the morning.  It recovered after a few minutes. The following day, she experienced exactly the same thing, but this time there was no recovery of her vision after about two hours. She was one of the early callers at the clinic that day. Do you know her reward for not assuming knowledge and not wasting valuable time? She had a full visual recovery within 24hours!

In my many years of practice in Nigeria, nearly all the patients I had seen with such a problem had ended up with a permanent visual loss because they had come too late.

Unnecessary delay in seeking appropriate medical care for any ailment often results in worsening the situation; development of complications which could be often severe; increased cost of treatment with a poor response; failure to obtain the desired end result of treatment; handicaps such as impaired vision or blindness and even death. Ignorance or a lack of adequate knowledge is a dangerous thing.