The introduction of various vaccines has helped to reduce the death rate of people in general. Recently, I have seen how the malaria vaccine is now available in some of our African countries to help reduce the mortality rate of malaria, a disease endemic in Africa.
In the past, whenever a vaccine was introduced, our older parents would hide it from us, believing that the white men had brought some poison to inject and destroy the whole town. A lot of people were shying away from receiving vaccines such as the polio vaccine.
The method of administration of the vaccines then made it so painful that young adults and teenagers cried a lot while receiving vaccines. The types of cannulas and needles used in modern times were not available back then.
Personally, I would rather accept to remain sick than go through some medical surgery for a certain sickness only to come out with complications worse than the condition I came to be treated for.
I remember vividly when my dad was laid on a hospital bed to be operated on when he suffered a hernia.
There was not enough provision for lighting for the surgery as there was no power supply in the hospital. They have used the light of a torch in the theater room. Even after the surgery was done successfully, the hospital lacked a stretcher that could be used to carry my dad up from the first floor to the third floor of the hospital.
While still in pain from surgery, my mom and brother have helped him on both hands and forced him to walk up the stairs with their support. Imagine someone who was just operated on after climbing staircases from the theater room to his hospital bed.
In other instances, I have seen women who are constantly against a caesarian section during a complicated delivery, having an understanding that the incision site wouldn't heal, which has sometimes turned to ulcers.
I have heard of a woman whose wounds refused to heal even after 18 years of childbirth through the CS section. This is a pointer to say that the surgical procedure wasn't sterile enough, and infections are a common thing in surgical theaters, resulting in such kinds of wounds. Women prefer to die rather than accept a CS during child labor.
- Experience of gender biases in science.
Growing up as a child, I heard that females are meant to remain nurses while males handle the much-respected doctoral positions.
I wonder what they meant by these over time, or just an assumption that a doctor's duty is heavier in weight than that of what a woman can carry. Hence, male doctors are meant to remain at the head while we have female nurses to support the doctors.
This has been one of the reasons why we have more males in that field than females. In recent times, there has been a balance in that line, and we have a good number of female doctors now. Some of the male gender now study nursing as a course; hence, we have both male and female nurses, and we equally have males in the midwifery section as well.
It is worth celebrating that science has saved a lot of lives in modern times and that more ethical rules have been introduced, reducing gender and racial differences. The populace now has more confidence in medical procedures, and complications from contemporary procedures have been brought to the nearest minimum.
Images are Canva designed.
My submission to the daily #Julyinleo I'm equally using this to invite all my friends to share with us their experiences about medicine and some ethical behaviors found therein via this link