Seek medical care from appropriate health facilities
A Physician Assistant at the Maranatha Hospital in Kumasi, Mr Samuel Nyarko, has advised people to desist from indulging in self-medication, since it poses great threat to their lives.
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He explained that since many ailments had similar symptoms, resorting to self-medication would first of all not help heal the actual ailment and could also lead to harming oneself with the wrong medication.
According to him, symptoms of many sickness are so similar that if one just follows symptoms to prescribe medication or do self-medication, the person might end up causing more harm to himself/herself, since the original sickness would not be treated and could lead to death or damage to the body.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic on the sidelines of a health screening exercise at Daban, a deprived community in Kumasi, Mr Nyarko hinted that information monitored from various health facilities in the region indicated that the self-medication canker, which is very high in the Ashanti Region, was very dangerous because many people hid behind poverty and rushed to drugs stores and pharmacy shops to buy drugs whenever they were ill.
Ignorance
The physician assistant said many people resorted to self-medication due to ignorance and poverty which made people not to take their health issues seriously, although they could face very serious repercussions.
He, therefore, appealed to people to seek medical care from the appropriate health facilities and avoid going to quacks and adopting self-medication as many health challenges had similar symptoms and needed proper screening and testing to get the right diagnosis of such conditions.
Health screening
A total of 138 residents of Daban benefited from the free-health screening with the ages of the people ranging between 22 and 55.
The event was organised by ASA Savings and Loans Ltd, a micro finance institution with its headquarters in Accra.
After the screening, 52 of the people were diagnosed with malaria and were given medication.
Forty-two of them were also treated with respiratory tract infections, while 18 were diagnosed with hypertension.
The General Manager of ASA Savings and Loans Ltd, Mr Sajibur Rahman, said the support was part of the company’s corporate social responsibility to the areas they operated, saying “ without good health, there would not be any good customer to do business with”.
He enumerated the various support it had given some deprived communities across the country such as drilling boreholes and assisting some brilliant needy students in various communities to enable them to have access to quality education.
Background
Set up in 2008, ASA Savings and Loan Ltd currently operates in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Eastern, Western, Greater Accra and Central regions with 108 business units across the country comprising 91 business centres and 17 branches.
There are plans to establish 20 more business centres across the country so that many more people in deprived communities in the country will have the opportunity to benefit from their products which were all geared towards poverty reduction.
The Chief of Daban, Nana Okyere Kwame, was full of praise for ASA Savings and Loans Ltd for the support which had come to improve the health needs of the people.
He appealed to more of such institutions to come to the communities to grant similar support to improve the living conditions of the people.