Don Casts Light On Childhood TB, Diabetes, Deaths In Ogun

                     •picture credit:tube.com

| The Daily Crucible | Monday, February 21, 2022

A Paediatrician, Prof.(Mrs) Musili Bolanle Fetuga, has revealed her findings on childhood Tuberculosis (TB) in Sagamu, a seedy town and local government in Ogun State.

Mrs Fetuga said that a total of 52 cases recorded at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital(OOUTH), Sagamu, within a given period, involved children of school age and who also belonged to the low socioeconomic wrung of the society.

She added that one third of the affected children also had HIV as a co - infection, explaining that at the time of investigation, it was observed that TB cases in Sagamu was prominent in the lower socioeconomic class characterised by poor nutrition, poor housing, overcrowding, poor ventilation and poor access to quality health care.

Recalling that the said cases were recorded between 2004 and 2009, she said that the situation might have not changed for better today.

The Professor of Paediatrics and Dean, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo College of Health Sciences, Sagamu, a unit of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago - Iwoye,  spoke while fielding questions from newsmen in respect of 102nd inaugural lecture of the institution, which she delivered on February 8, this year.

Identifying poor feeding, poor growth and weight loss as prominent features of childhood Tuberculosis, she suggested improved standard of living and routine HIV screening in Sagamu as useful control measures against TB infection among children.

She also noted that diabetes milletus in is another health challenge being observed in children from poor socioeconomic backgrounds in Sagamu, lamenting that due to poverty, they come for medical attention for the first time with the life - threatening  stage of the disease.

"Due to socioeconomic challenges, things are probably worst in some aspects. For instance, we see children with diabetes, we see them and they are not so many but we do see them in family that have diabetes. So, for some of them when they come in, they came in with Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA). This is a life - threatening complication of the disease, there is no insulin and where it exists, they cannot afford it."

Earlier in her lecture titled, 'That our children may grow: the potentials, challenges and privileges,'  Prof. Fetuga revealed that the pattern of childhood deaths in Sagamu as recorded in OOUTH between 1996 and 2005 as examined by her in 2007, showed that of the 10,451 paediatric admissions, 1,320 of them died, stressing that most deaths occurred within 48 hours of hospitalisation while of the patients that died, 57.3% of them were neonates (aged less than 30 days from birth).

To arrest the situation, she recommended among other things, calls on the state and federal governments to address various socioeconomic challenges confronting families and the nation, provision of affordable hormone replacement and insulin therapies for children and routine newborn screening for hypothyroidism, Tuberculosis, HIV and diabetes.