I went to a friend's house yesterday and saw an incompletely used sachet of Ofloxacin 200mg on
his ttable and initially I thought he was still on the drug, so I enquired to know why he was using the drug only for him to carelessly inform me that he used the drug when he "treated fever". I was like; on whose prescription? And why didn't he complete the dosage? The guy gave me the shock of my life when he simply replied that he bought the drug with some antimalarial drugs from a roadside chemist shop to treat malaria and typhoid without prescriptions from a doctor or pharmacist, and had to stop using the antibiotics when the "fever" ameliorated. And this is a supposedly educated guy who should know better the dangers of indiscriminate use of antibiotics! No wonder we now have rampant cases of antibiotics resistance in our hospitals!
That was just one of the numerous cases of drug misuse and abuse going on in Nigeria on daily basis.
I have had a case where a neighbor of mine came down with kidney failure due to several injections of gentamycin 280 from an "auxiliary nurse" while treating a supposedly staph infection. I have also seen a guy who takes 4 tablets of paracetamol 500mg at a dosing his reason being that 2tablets of the drug no longer work on him, yet he doesn't know that he is over tasking his liver and kidney and could come down with diseases of these organs in no distant time.

No wonder we have very low life expectancy in Nigeria! And it seems that the government deliberately want Nigerians to continue with such abysmal life expectancy! How else could one explain the fact that apart from underfunding the nations hospitals, the government has continued to fold its arms and watch Nigerians abuse drugs the way they do? Why has the Nigerian government not done anything to make sensitive substances like drugs accessible only when the benefits outweighs the risk? Why is Nigeria still among the few backward countries where potentially toxic substances like drugs are sold by unqualified people who are only interested in making profits without minding the effects of these drugs on users?

I decided to write this post after what transpired yesterday in my friend's house, because I remember that a cousin of mine who is doing an MSc programme in the UK once asked me to send him some cards of Ampiclox through his friend who visited Nigeria, as he could not get the drug without prescription and without being monitored by a pharmacist. A typical Nigerian will scream "Ordinary ampiclox"!, because in Nigeria we can easily abuse higher grades of antibiotics, let alone ampiclox.

U would not blame ur friend cos even doctor abuse d use, they always prescribe antibiotic with antimalaria