Gas Canister Explosions and Little Children
I am from North East Nigeria. During the dry season, temperatures can reach 42 degrees Celsius. It sometimes feels like 44 degrees Celsius, no thanks to the changing climate. It was that time of year again, and I was at an air-conditioner (AC) maintenance shop to fix my car’s AC. While I sat on a nearby bench, the mechanic started to work. There was an explosion about 30 minutes later. I got away with only a deep cut on my left thumb.
I began to ponder over the situation after receiving emergency care at the hospital and returning home with my very painful injury. A fast-food vendor with an open flame about 10 metres from the AC workshop was the source of ignition. ‘How come she was so close to extremely combustible materials?’ I asked myself. My response was, poor urban development with little oversight from key health and urban planning bodies.
A few days later, I spoke with the food vendor. She claimed she didn’t have anywhere else to go because she couldn’t afford to rent a shop. This was her sole source of income. A similar response was given the mechanic. After that encounter, I began to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings — it was impossible to escape the ever-present inequality. I could have easily lost a lot of blood and died as a result of any of the numerous inefficiencies at any of the steps in the health-care system. I worked in a government-owned hospital, so I was familiar with the situation.
Fast forward to the present. I now work with the paediatrics department at another government-owned tertiary institution that is underfunded and understaffed. I see an average of 30 children daily at the out-patient clinic with an obligation to make all of them better. Fatalities that could have been avoided occur due to late referrals of severe cases of malaria and other childhood diseases from primary health care centres. Seeing such cases everyday was beginning to affect my mental health and efficiency at work. I pondered over how these deaths could be prevented.
I made an effort to speak with some of the parents and guardians to find out more about their situation. In some cases, the parents of these children say that they cannot afford to pay for the cost of getting the sick child from their rural community to the city’s tertiary hospital. In other cases, they get to the tertiary hospital, but are unable to pay for the necessary medical care due to lack of resources. There is only so much I can do on an individual basis in the clinic, despite my best efforts to inform parents and guardians about preventive measures. If action is not taken, there will be more cases similar to the ones above, especially with the present rise in the cost of living and the deteriorating socioeconomic situations both nationally and internationally which are determinants of health.
The above experiences provided me with some insight into the significance of public health. Due to social circumstances, poor primary care, to name a few, these individuals and their families could not make healthy and health-enabling decisions.
My undergraduate study as a medical student introduced me to public health and community medicine, and I figured the best way to have an impact on the community was to pursue a degree in Environment and Public Health.
