Medical consultants decry high rate of hypertension cases in North Central zone

Speaking at the 2018 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the association in Ilorin on Wednesday, its chairman, Dr Olusola Afolabi, said that the upsurge has remained a major concern among medical practitioners in the zone, warning against sedentary ways of life and poor eating habits.

“The issue of Hypertension is alarming in all the states of the North Central zone. We don’t know if it has anything to do with political situations around now.

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“But recent health statistics around the zone have shown that many sudden deaths are most common just as strokes are the order of the day. People should do more exercise and watch their food intakes to reduce the disease commonly christened ‘sudden death,” he said.

As part of the weeklong AGM, a lecture was delivered by a renowned consultant, Community Physician, Dr Sunday Aderibigbe, who spoke on ‘Transition from Volume to Value Through the use of Technology in Medicine.’

According to Aderibigbe, the modern world, a technological one has the inclination to get things done faster and at a cheaper cost via technology especially in medicine.

For him, the rate of success in medical practice before now was measured by a number of patients treated. He said the development is at present being viewed as Volume Based Health Care.

“This system provides for remuneration based on the number of patients attended to in a particular time. This fee for service syndrome is common in the private sector. But today what the world focuses on is about the Value Added to Live especially the patients. In some climes, it is called Value Based Health Care Model.

Describing patients’ satisfaction as the best approach to effective health care delivery, Aderibigbe said to make the proposition effective, all the relevant departments in any health sector must collaborate.

He added,  “we should realise that health care costs go beyond what the patient paid in the hospital. It covers also other exigencies. But the overall benefits is that society becomes healthier.”

The Medical Practitioner noted that Value-Based Health Care should be technologically driven noting, “it is important to move from volume to value in modern  medical practice.”

He canvassed among others the technology needed to move from volume to value to include: records, consultations, laboratory technology, treatment, patients care alerts, remote patient monitoring, telehealth services, secure clinical massaging and pharmacology.

Aderibigbe made a stunning but cheering disclosure at the forum about a Cancer nanotherapy recently developed which according to him has the potential of bypassing healthy cells of the body, working only through the cancerous cells of the body thereby reducing the rate of after-effects of the drug.

The local MDCAN encouraged its members to participate in active politics as a means of contributing their quota to the development of their environment, nation and the world at large.