I attended this event. There was loud music, dancing and free food for everybody.
I asked around and was told it was a Survival party. Survival party for who?, I asked. Amaka. Don’t you know Amaka Okojie?, came the response. Amaka happened to be a neighbor down the street.
I made further inquiry about the surrounding circumstances. I was told it was a great rescue for her. That she had to throw this party despite the debt she was already in.
I became curious. I wanted to know more.
Amaka was on a short trip outside the country. It was a vacation. It all started well as evidenced by the pictures she shared of her friends and some locals there on her social media accounts. They visited places. Restaurants. Malls, street stalls, you name it. Exciting trip, it was shaped up to.
Few days in, she complained of loose bowel motions and a slight feeling of being unwell. She quickly brushed it aside as some mild Traveler’s Diarrhea. She got feverish later and took some Tylenol hoping to feel better but it only got worse. Her temperature kept rising, from 37°C the day before to 37.5oC and then 38°C by the third day. She got worried but continued with Self-help. Becoming weak and Losing appetite for food, she eventually had to cut the her trip short and returned back to the country.
On landing at the airport, she immediately made contact with Emergency Medical Services. She was seen by a doctor who reviewed her, ordered several laboratory tests and concluded she had typhoid fever. Upon further investigations, it turned out the typhoid fever had also caused her some intestinal perforations. She now had abdominal pain that was becoming very intense. She needed emergency surgery. She had some portions of her damaged intestines removed at surgery.
After a long hospital stay for post-surgical management and rehabilitation, she was discharged home. Although medical costs appeared expensive, she was grateful she made a recovery. She is fully her old self again.
This story is better imagined than experienced.
Although there were other people on the same trip with Amaka that visited the same places and shared the same meals, they did not experience any of her medical problems.
Medical Science sees this in two different possibilities:
A). Having Immunity – which could be (i) acquired or (ii) innate.
B). Having a Carrier state
A food vendor was once identified for inadvertently making her clients ill with typhoid fever even though she remained clinically very healthy. She happened to be a carrier of the agent of the disease.
Problem is like that non-medical other that my class Teacher always told us about in the Literature class ”…there’s no art by which the mind’s construction can be read on the face”. You can neither know who is a carrier by the way he or she appears nor can you know who, like the friends of Amaka, is immune may be by virtue of having received a typhoid fever vaccine.
CAUSES AND PREVENTION:
Typhoid fever is caused by a bacterium known as Salmonella Typhi. It can be found in untreated water or raw and Contaminated fruits and Vegetables. Poultry sources are often suspect.
Particularly now that there is a flood situation in several parts of the world, Nigeria in the eye of the storm now, water bodies are contaminated so that chances of unprotected people getting this Illness has heightened.
TREATMENT
Diagnosed cases of Typhoid fever require supervised medical care and in complicated cases like Amaka’s, more than medicines alone.
Mayo Clinic recommendation on the 5 ways to prevent getting Typhoid fever are highlighted as follows:
- Wash your hands frequently especially with soap and water to control the spread of the Infection.
- Avoid drinking untreated water
- Avoid raw and Contaminated fruits and Vegetables
- Choose hot foods.
- Know where your doctors are.
Remember, there is a vaccine to prevent typhoid fever. Bears repetition. THERE IS A VACCINE TO PREVENT TYPHOID FEVER. It is available and it is accessible. It protects for as long as 3 years and you can live freely and travel anywhere confidently. You don’t have to suffer Typhoid fever. Get vaccinated now.
We encourage community protection and personalized care.
