When it comes to excessive self-medication, I think the pharmaceutical companies have a major role to play in this. With the way they market drugs, and rattle off their dosages just like that, they make it readily available for everyone to get. They run ads glorifying their products and talking about how the medication will beat the crap out of whatever illness you’re facing. Then, they make sure to end with; “If symptoms persist, please consult your doctor!”
I believe this style is what paved the way to what we’re experiencing today. For every small fever or headache that they feel, people already assume that it’s malaria. Someone once told me that he never gets headaches, except when he has malaria. I found that absurd because there were times when something as basic as tiredness could cause one headache. Hell, there was even a time when I was so hungry that I had serious headache and I was running a temperature. I didn’t suspect it was malaria at all, I recognized sapa for what it was. And when I finally ate food, both the fever and headache vanished.
Self-medication can be good because it helps you to curb sicknesses right in the bud before it progresses into something else. Once you see some symptoms that correlate with a certain sickness, you take drugs to that effect, hoping that it will wipe the sickness away. That’s how so many people are coping in this part of the world.
And can you blame them? We don’t have enough government hospitals, and the ones that we do have are short-staffed and lack adequate funds to make them meet up with the demands. When you go to a government hospital, the process you’d have to get through just before you actually see the doctor is overwhelming. You might be feeling sick today and go for a test, but you’d have to return in about a month or so just to get the result. That’s just how bad it can be.
The places are always crowded and even with your sickness, you’ll have to battle with other sick people just to get your time with the doctor. It’s sad and so painful. This is the reason many people just avoid it altogether, because if it’s malaria, then they can easily buy over-the-counter drugs and make it all go away. Simple as that.
You could say that private hospitals are a better option, but besides being ridiculously expensive, there’s no guarantee that they’re actually better. Yeah, you might be answered faster, and you could get your consultation faster, but it doesn’t mean that they have better doctors. As a matter of fact, some private hospitals are even quacks, at least with government hospitals, you can feel a bit more certain that they’re professionals. Not guaranteed, just a bit more certain.
As for me, I don’t really have a story when it comes to self-medication. It’s something I do from time to time when I see that I have malaria. However, I’m not one to simply start popping pills just because I have a headache or I fever comes up. I usually wait until I’m certain, which is usually when I start shivering due to the intense fever. Once I start taking the medication, it leaves almost immediately.
So far, I’ve not had any complications from this, although I make sure that I’m careful in my applications. Every once in a while, I go for a full body test to make sure that I don’t have any surprises hiding away in my body. I also ensure that I follow the required dosage, the last thing I want is to overdose or get addicted to drugs. I’ve seen the ruins such can bring to people.
Like everything else, we just have to be careful in what we do, because at this point, and with so many fake drugs in the market, one can never be too careful.
