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Over the counter
In Sikaman, I can bet that almost everybody you see is either a doctor or a pharmacist. If you’re sick, you don’t need to go to the hospital to see a doctor. Just see a friend and tell him your problem. “I have strong headache, bodily pains and loss of appetite.”
Your friend will look into your face and prophesy that you’re also suffering from constipation. Probably your nose looks like that of a chronic ‘constipator’.
“I can’t go to toilet”, you’d readily confirm.
“Don’t worry. Go and buy Chloroquine, four tablets, take two in the morning after koko and two in the evening. Also buy WL; if your stomach is hard take three, otherwise take two. Don’t forget and take four. Also don’t take it and go and board a bus to Kumasi or else you’ll set a national record.
See another friend with the same problem and he’d tell you to go and get Alagbin. “If there is no Alagbin, buy Drastin or Top Tabs. The malaria will go like water.
Meet yet another friend and he is likely to tell you, “Go and buy abom belt (terramycin or ampicillin). Take two straight. Wait for thirty minutes and balance it with three tots of raw akpeteshie. The fever will go long time. Me, this is how I cure my fever-o! Me I’ll never go to hospital and a nurse will be pricking my buttocks with a needle. I am not a fool”.
Somehow, all the four prescriptions by the unorthodox medical practitioners are effective but only to some extent. They can mask the disease called malaria and the patient will experience a sense of relief, but a relapse is inevitable.
In fact, if you’re sick of malaria and you ‘check’ a quarter of bitters, you’ll start sweating like a dock worker. Sweat will burst Alomele forth all over the body and will finally create an air-conditioner in the armpit, a sort of natural cooling system one can always rely upon.
The effect of this local alcohol which surpasses Russian Vodka in international status and ability to turn the human eye, will make you feel the malaria has been evicted from your system. In due course, you certainly will come to appreciate the fact that peters is not a cure for malaria.
From 6.30 p.m., go from one drugstore to another and you’ll see many people buying drugs over the counter. Only about five per cent of them buy with doctors’ prescription.
The rest are self-made, self-promoted doctors and pharmacists who buy butazolidin, malarex, chloroquine, phensic, baralgin, valium, cafenol, kaolin, anusol, chloramphenicol, anacin and many others by their own prescriptions.
Even you can buy syringes over the counter and that is why some herbalists are going about injecting anybody they see. In the process they distribute tetanus free of charge. They are very generous!
We are all guilty of self-medication including me Kwame Alomele. I don’t often cure my malaria by going to the doctor when I know I am also a doctor. The only difference is that I’ve not been to the medical school and sworn the Hippocratic Oath.
Although I realise that self-medication is bad, I’m compelled to do it because it saves me time. Kokotako says he self-medicates because it saves him from the wrath of private doctors who always want to empty his back pocket.
In developed countries over-the-counter drug purchases are forbidden. The druggist may sell you some pain killers and condoms if you want to have a showdown with your fiancée.
But to go to a pharmacist and say you want to buy Indocid without a doctor’s prescription is unheard of, and of course, you’d be given the marching off orders.
Self-medication is a form of drug abuse which must not be encouraged. This form of abuse is common in third world countries because families do not have their own doctors.
Ideally every family is supposed to have a family doctor who comes around periodically to examine the members, offer treatment and advice.
Any ailment is first relayed to him by phone and he gives appropriate advice. He is paid a regular fee, for these services. In Sikaman, only about one per cent of the population can afford the services of a family doctor. The money that would be used to pay the family doctor a week would be of better service if used to prepare groundnut soup that would last some three days.
So in the absence of the family doctor, many act in his stead and do their own by diagnoses, give their own prescriptions often by trial and error and risk wrong medication, under-doses, over-doses. After all, “All die be die”.
Perhaps if health services could be cheaply sought, self-medication will reduce. This brings to mind the idea of the National Health Insurance Scheme and its advantages. Certain diseases like heart ailment that need surgery to correct require between Gh¢ six and 10 million in terms of cost.
The Weekly Spectator has had to launch appeals for funds for those who need money to cure medical conditions including Hole-In-Heart. Some of these appeals will not be necessary if a National Health Insurance Scheme is in place to which anybody who values his health and life could contribute to and benefit therefrom.
This will also reduce the incidence of self-medication because your health needs will always be catered for whether you are suffering from kooko or stubborn constipation.
Perhaps, we’d want to know why the scheme is still not in place!
This article was first published on Saturday, October 15, 1994
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THE typical itinerant salesman in Sikaman is a herbalist. He is normally a slim macho with the capacity to perambulate the expanse of area covering the triangle of Accra-Tema-Ashiaman. In short, he can walk a total of 60 miles a day, marketing a product that cures every disease, including poverty. 
The door-to-door herbal pharmacist advertises his product by word of mouth. He has nothing to do with the Food and Drugs Board (FDB). After all, his concoctions do not feature on FM stations.
Those herbalists who cannot walk to propagate the herbal gospel, liaise with drivers of mass transportation and their mates. They are, therefore, given the chance to sell their products on Benz buses that ply the routes.
Normally, the herbalist starts his sales message with a prayer and Bible study. He asks the passengers to bow down their heads in supplication to God the father, the son, the Holy Spirit.
When a herbalist asks the passengers to close their eyes and bow their heads, Moslems on board naturally feel offended. They feel that the herbalist has no right to assume that every passenger is a Christian. They think such an assumption is an affront to Islam.
So a Moslem on board will raise the hand for a point of order. He’ll remind the herbalist that it would be in his own interest to mind his language.
“Be careful the way you address people in a public place. Not every person here is a Christian,” he’d state assertively.
Of course, the herbalist will promptly ignore him, but would all the same “watch” his tongue. Who knows whether or not the Moslem brother is inspired by Quoranic zeal to defend the tenets of Islam to the hilt?
When he starts saying, “Wallahi!” and “Inshallah!” it could be the beginning of proclaiming Islam as supreme, a point which must be driven home with talibanic precision.
So the herbalist must tread carefully lest he steps on fire.
The herbalist could even add a measure of mirth to it all, by announcing that Christians on board today have very interesting company on the journey, but that should not detract from the business of the day.
The Moslem brother will weigh the words carefully and offer a wry smile.
He must be careful the occasion does not degenerate into the use of semantics and proverbial oration to deride his conviction that public utterances must be mindful of religious sensibilities. He has made his point very clear and expects that it is taken in good faith in the interest of a peaceful journey.
The herbalist will now open the New Testament and preach salvation, stating clearly that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ and NOBODY else.
The Moslem brother will now start twitching his moustache. The visible and almost revolutionary reflexes of his upper lip can be an indication that sentiments have begun superseding reason, and the outcome could well be tragic now shift uneasily in his seat.
The time has come for him to also express his right to the religion of his fore-bears. He’ll put his hand into his pocket and rise to his feet. The time has indeed come!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 9, 2006
When the cause of a particular problem like sickness, disease, sudden illness, a social issue etc. are not known, it stands to reason that resolving it becomes a huge challenge.
Citizens would understand the government when public announcements are made to the effect that government is trying to find a solution to the issue, even though it is taking a while for it to be resolved because citizens are rational beings.
On the other hand, if the solution to a particular issue is known to everybody but the government for whatever reason, is dragging its feet in resolving it, citizens become frustrated and begin to lose trust in their leaders.
One such issue is the heavy traffic along a section of the Kasoa – Odokor road. A short stretch of bad road between the traffic light at the Weija Government Hospital and the entrance to the entrance of the overhead that leads to the N1, is the cause of the problem but nothing is being done about it, day after day, week after week, month after month. Thus is clearly unacceptable.
Another issue that requires urgent attention is the lack of pavements along a lot of streets in parts of the various Municipal Assemblies. Exercise is a prerequisite for long life and healthy living and for those of us who it has become a way of life, this issue of people putting up structures right to the edge of the drains beside the roads, are making life difficult for us.
We are compelled to walk along the roads, putting our lives at serious risk. Pedestrians should never be compelled to compete with vehicles on our streets and roads. Roads and streets are made for vehicles and pavements are made for pedestrians. That is the norm. Any attempt to normalise a situation where pedestrians are mingling with vehicles is insanity.
It is the road regulations that makes it so and therefore district or municipal assemblies are to take responsibility and ensure that spaces for pavements are not encroached upon. Citizens have rights that must be protected by their leaders and making pavements available to pedestrians, is one of them.
When we hear of teachers having sex with students, it appears it is something recent. It is not a new phenomenon. It has been there since Adam. Perhaps this issue is getting much attention due to the proliferation of social media. It was an open secret in times past when Teachers were in relationships with female students and some married them immediately after completion of school.
Some teachers were also known to be having unholy interactions with female pupils but due to the times that these acts occurred, human rights issues and the awareness around it, allowed such unscrupulous teachers to get away with their crimes.
Now we are in a different era and so a Headmaster is now in hot waters. He is alleged to have raped about 19 female students and as usual, some officials tried to cover it up and are also in hot waters and their actions or inactions in the matter are under investigation.
Why the man has been allowed to roam freely without being arrested is simply mind boggling. It appears that the law applies differently, depending on who you are. This issue came to public attention sometime in August this year, yet the police had not arrested or invited this man for question regarding the rape allegation.
It has come out that he is a Constituency Secretary of the ruling party and the question in the public domain is that, is it because he is a political figure that is why he is still walking around without questioning? I believe in the rule of law so let us hold our breadth and let the proper thing be done.
The police must however be seen to be active in this matter. God bless.
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