Economic hardship amid skyrocketing prices of life-saving drugs in the country is taking its toll on patients with cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic diseases as the situation has forced many out of treatment and turned them into beggars to escape death. Janet Ogundepo reports After spending a month on admission at the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja, Kogi State, a driver with a diabetic foot ulcer, Mr Salifu Lawal, left the hospital without getting the recommended surgery he direly needed. His exit was not due to the absence of health practitioners but the lack of funds to continue to pay for his treatment.
Before and during the driver’s hospital admission, he had relied on donations from family and friends coupled with this daily take home from his driving job, to buy his medications. The rise in the prices of his medications further limited the quantity of insulin his funds could buy. https://healthwise.
punchng.com/rising-antimalarial-drug-costs-deepen-patients-plight-in-six-months/ Seeing his situation, the nurses who attended to him rallied around him to beg for funds within the hospital premises, but the money was not enough. Lawal continued, “I don’t have any hope because I have spent so much money to treat this leg.
I spent N23,000 daily on it. My friends and family have supported me so much that I can’t ask for them for more.” Without hope for future funds and with no means of livelihood, the middle-aged Kogi indigene is yet to get his insulin.