Yusuf Olaniyonu, a veteran journalist and former Ogun State Commissioner for Information, late last year told a story that read like one of the phantasmic, surreal tales from another planet. The 58-year-old media guru had an enlarged prostate challenge, which cannot be said to be life-threatening yet. This is because, by his own account, his condition had not reached the stage of nocturia, which is a typical symptom of enlarged prostate.
However, he was seized by an uprush of fear of the unknown because his father had died of prostate cancer and the ailment is said to be hereditary. That drew him to, quite wisely, seek timely medical attention.
According to him, an urologist had recommended surgery as a solution to his enlarged prostate, so it would not affect his kidneys. He was until then hale and hearty. He, in fact, drove himself to the unnamed highbrow Abuja hospital for an “elective surgery” that was not to last for more than 30 minutes. However, the first surgery developed complications after the surgeons had ruptured his bladder and wheeled him back to the ward.
After a rigmarole, an impalpable medical circuit, which was bound to end nowhere but sure death, Olaniyonu, with the timely intervention of the former Senate President Bukola Saraki (Olaniyonu was his Special Adviser Media), had to be flown to Egypt where he spent the next two months at Neuro Espitalia. It was there he received the needed medical succour and corrective treatment that eventually revived him.
However, if Olaniyonu was lucky to have lived to tell his macabre tale himself, Waheed Ayilara, then Akwa Ibom Commissioner of Police, did not have the same grace. He had the same prostate enlargement problem with Olaniyonu. And like the former commissioner, he too walked into the hospital by himself for a surgery at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) but ended his journey in the morgue!
His shocking death, about six months after Olaniyonu’s ghoulish ordeal, was an exemplication of the insuperable tragedy in form of the gale of sudden deaths that has been plaguing the nation in recent times. It came with such a tinge of high drama that the Lagos State Government was impelled to order an immediate probe of the circumstances under which the surgical knife went awry for the top cop. The result has not up till now been released or made public.
He went for the surgery the following Wednesday, August 28. But Ayilara, a devout Muslim who acted briefly as Lagos CP before he was posted to Akwa Ibom as substantive CP, did not survive the surgery as he had feared. He was buried the following day according to Islamic rites.
The top cop’s despicable death and Olaniyonu’s narrow escape are typical examples of how otherwise mundane medical procedures now routinely send many Nigerians, including VIPs, to their untimely graves!
Forty-two-year-old Adebayo Egbuson was ebullient and agile as he joined members of his church, the Christ Apostolic Church parish, Lagos, on October 11,2022, in an orgy of praise and worship session. But suddenly, the businessman slumped and died, leaving behind his wife and six children, including a six-month-old baby.
According to his widow, Mrs.Toyin Egbuson, he was strong, energetic and didn’t show any sign of illness on the day he died. She still couldn’t come to terms with the reality of the demise of a man who was not sick. “That Sunday morning,” she recalled ruefully, “we woke up and had our usual morning devotion together. I prepared breakfast, which we had before heading to the church. He was hale and hearty when he drove us to the church.”
Mr. Nnamdi Oko, 47, was playing his favorite game of tennis on Saturday, September 15, 2022, when he suddenly slumped on the court in the presence of his family, who came to watch him display his dexterity in the game. The shock was indescribable as he was pronounced dead on arrival at the nearest hospital by the doctor.
In a similar befuddling tragedy, Mrs. Bisola Uduak on April 10, 2022, slumped and died at the reunion party of her school when she was dancing, jubilating with friends and old school-mates. At first, her friends made efforts to resuscitate her by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, otherwise known as CPR, it yielded no result as the 50-year-old was pronounced dead when she was rushed to the hospital.
These are just some of the many cases of the growing trend of sudden deaths, a development that is fast becoming an epidemic! It is almost becoming a daily routine for people who did not betray any sign of sickness to just slump and die on the spot or be confirmed dead at the nearest hospital.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines sudden deaths as those occurring within 24 hours of an abrupt change in one’s previous clinical status. Cases of this, the global health body says, are becoming prevalent in sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria.
Sudden death is said to occur when a blood clot suddenly cuts off the blood flow to the heart, preventing oxygen from getting to the heart. A lack of oxygen-containing blood flowing to the heart results in the loss of the heart muscle.
According to health experts, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have lost their lives to sudden death in their prime in recent times, leaving the nation at the mercy of the scourge; even though it is the cases of prominent Nigerians that are mostly being reported.
The lawmaker representing Akure South/North Constituency in the House of Representatives, Adedayo Omolafe, recently slumped and died. He was said to have participated actively in a caucus meeting of the House of Representatives an evening before the unfortunate incident. He was not known to be suffering from any chronic illness prior to his death.
Very Important People (VIPs), who have bidden sudden farewell in similar circumstances, according to reports include: the former Deputy Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Zannah Umar Mustapha; former Ondo State Commissioner for Information, Ranti Akerele; former Speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, Tonye Ezekiel, and his Taraba counterpart, Haruna Tsokwa.
Fifty-year-old Mrs Bukola had left Ilorin, Kwara State capital, for Lagos as a healthy woman ready to assist her daughter-in-law, who had just been delivered of a baby. But barely one week of her stay in Lagos, she suddenly slumped and died, just like that, without any clinical manifestation.
“Mother,” her son, one Adewale, recalled, “never complained of fever, headache or anything. In fact, the morning she died, she bathed my little baby and we discussed a lot of issues. There wasn’t any inkling that she would die that day. But by that afternoon, she suddenly fell and started gasping for breath. We quickly rushed her to the hospital where she was declared ‘brought in dead (BID)!”
But unknown to Adewale and other members of the family, his mother was suffering from hypertension and had a heart attack. So, the matriarch’s death remains a big, painful shock for the family because no one had any premonition of the tragedy or prepared for it.
In properly situating this gale of mystery deaths, experts have tried to refute the popular myths widely held by Nigerians that sudden, unexpected deaths are due to over-thinking, stress, diabolical powers or the emerging economic hardships in the country. They imply that the roots of the new trend may go beyond that.
Experts list the likely major causal factors as hypertension, stroke, heart attack as well as careless and unhealthy lifestyles. Some of these are believed to be silent killers. They are very dangerous because they are mostly insidious; they hardly come with symptoms. Many hypertension sufferers, for example, do not know because they hardly experience symptoms.
Other causes identified include cardiovascular factors, which can result from thrombosis, gastrointestinal disease and in some cases, diarrhoea and vomiting. Asphyxia and gastrointestinal causes, medical experts imply, can also lead to sudden deaths.
“Those who believe they are living well and are not hypertensive,” according to a medical advisory, “must have their blood pressure (BP) checked regularly; this is very important. If not, it may lead to stroke or cause the heart to stop suddenly, which we call heart attack. This can happen to anyone irrespective of age. Medical experts identify stroke and heart attack from records as the major causes of over 93.7 percent of the sudden and unexpected deaths in the country.
Other probable causes of sudden deaths are careless and reckless lifestyles, especially among the youths of today. They are hooked on dangerous and risible drugs such as Canadian loud, cocaine, heroine, monkey tales, among others.
There is also poor self-care. An average Nigerian does not care about regular or routine medical check-ups, which are necessary to detect and tackle possible deadly ailments early. Instead of taking pro-active care of his health, he prefers to dissipate fortune on ephemeral indulgences like cruising around in cars, putting up architectural wonders and committing to roistering in ‘owanbe’ parties as well as social clubs.
The parlous state of our health sector does not help matters. It is plagued by lack of proper medical diagnosis and treatment, poor medical facilities, improper training, unmotivated medical personnel across board, overwhelmed medical facilities, glut of fake drugs, among others.
The global health body recently identified Nigeria as one of the 55 countries with the most pressing health workforce needs. Indeed, the country is grappling with a severe health manpower deficiency that places it as the third largest country with absolute shortage of health workers in the world.
Nigeria’s current doctors -to-patients ratio of four to 10,000 falls far below the WHO standard of one to 600. Whereas, the United States of America’s(USA’s) ratio is 26 to 10,000 and 28 in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that at least 2,000 medical doctors leave Nigeria yearly and no fewer than 5,407 Nigerian trained doctors are currently working with the British National Health Service in UK. And over 5,000 medical personnel— physicians, dentists, nurses and other health professionals of Nigerian descent— are also in US health workforce.
According to the President of the Nigerian Medical Association(NMA), Dr. Francis Faduyile, over 33,000 out of the 75,000 Nigerian medical doctors who registered with NMA have left the country for greener pastures. Countries like US, UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Australia, among others, have continued to poach the best of our medical professionals, leaving the country bedraggled and prostrate.
As a result, less qualified, less experienced medical personnel are ineluctably filling the vacuum left by medical buffs being consistently poached by foreign countries in sensitive areas like surgeries. This is partly contributory to the incidence of sudden deaths like that of CP Ayilara.
As for deaths from other causes, medical advisories encourage Nigerians to keep a healthy lifestyle, do regular exercises, have regular blood pressure checks, eat healthy and regularly as well as avoid sedentary lifestyles. Experts say that non-communicable diseases, including cardiac issues, will be reduced significantly with healthy lifestyles.
To reduce the prevalence of sudden deaths, people are also enjoined to stop such bad habits as lack of exercise, lack of sleep, reduction of caffeine intake, weight loss, reduction in salt intake and alcohol consumption, among others. They should also avoid or at least drastically reduce consumption of fast, processed and canned foods, and be heavy on vegetables and fruits.
