Why people may not take vaccine

My first job after I graduated was as an intern in the University Training hospital, where I trained. Even then, I was surprised that I was taken as it was usually reserved for the best of the best or you had to know someone. I did not consider myself a good student, but I did try my best. Although I came from a village right next to the city where the University was located, it seems that it is now engulfed by the city now considered a suburb. As a junior doctor, you notice the effect immediately. As a medical student, you are chased away from the wards by the senior nurses when it was night or at odd hours. As a doctor, all the nurses take care of you. I noticed that I had many “mothers”, “sisters”, “aunts”, etc. and even made sure that you had eaten, especially when they found out we were from the same city. The cafeteria delivers food to each ward for the “doctor on call”. Although for all intent and purposes, your work is essentially a glorified phlebotomist and ward clerk for most of the time during the day, when all the other residents are around. But it does have its moments, although late at night you might fight yourself assisting neurosurgery, cesarean section, or you will find that operating on another patient’s abdomen and doing a lumbar puncture of another.

I am writing this piece because of my experience in the Children Emergency Clinic. Here is where children are brought for far too many cases than I can remember to died. Although many survive, those children that died there are far too many remember. When the child comes to UCH, it is usually considered a hopeless case. Traditional doctors would have used various concoctions and treatments. For example, you would see different types of leaves, palm oil, mixed with western drugs like antibiotics. Then there would be scarification marks on the wrists, arms, legs, head, etc. The traditional healer would have tried to apply herbs into the bloodstream. But, of course, things like tetanus, other bacterial infections, Hepatitis, AIDS, etc., would have hitched a ride on the unwashed instruments used to break the skin. Those cases from private clinics around UCH, managed by Nurses (who sat in as “doctors”), giving the child patient all kinds of concoctions a variety of drugs, there were specific doctors whose patients ended up in the Children’s Emergency, that were could identify by the various treatment and seeing needle marks in the abdomen we knew that he was trying to drain out the stomach.

Since the mothers are sceptical about the vaccine, we find ourselves treating measles (which is a viral infection — back in the 90s, they were a few cheap antiviral agents). Hence, the best treatment is to let the virus rip through the system but only treat the symptoms. Most of the children who died would have been saved if they had the vaccine, another significant majority by good diet, and the third a combination. But most of the cases were anaemic due to infection, bloodletting and a poor diet.

There are days that the Children’s Emergency Clinic is filled with people, blood would arrive for one patient, and the nurses would call out the name, the mother would have slept off. Only to be woken by the child gasping for air, there is insufficient blood to carry oxygen to the tissues due to anaemic heart failure. Hence, the heart will beat ever faster to ensure insufficient blood is used to carry oxygen to the tissues. Eventually, the heart fails as it can no longer cope. The best treatment, in this case, would be a blood transfusion, but with blood exchange’s cultural and religious element, they have to bring their relatives and friends or by blood. Then, in the chaos of the treatment room, you could feel the frustration of everyone in the room and the pain of the mothers who felt that they were listening to their family and friends, none of them which were present with you in the early mornings or late at night but were all neatly tuck up in their warm beds and their bellies full. If the child eventually dies, they would convince the mothers that it “was God’s will”. In a land with a high level of religiosity, no one questions God’s will. It is easy to convince the mother that God will protect her child, not the vaccine, and if the child dies, it is God’s will. It’s not dependent on the doctors or nurses that they live. Hence, it is a “get out of jail card” for the incompetent or lazy doctor. Unfortunately, many of them do not even come to work in some rural areas as it is God’s will, whether a person dies or lives. Instead, they looked at vaccines and their effect on the populace and the misinformation, like using aborted human fetuses used in the vaccine production.

The vaccine is the mark of the breast, or it is used to track people, the advice then, as of now, could be easily given, especially if you do not feel the repercussions of them, “do not take the vaccine”, can quickly come out of your mouth when you only have to worry about yourself. In the world, Polio has been eradicated like Smallpox which has disappeared and is the only virus that exists under heavy security. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared Smallpox eradicated, and no cases of naturally occurring Smallpox have happened since. Polio was found in only two countries, Nigeria and Pakistan. In Nigeria, it was found in the Northern part. There was a rumour going around that it would cause infertility in women or a way for the West to control the developing world population. Hence, a lot of mothers refused to bring their children for vaccines.

I used to look at those days in UCH as due to ignorance of the populace of the city we practice in, those in the Northern part of the country, and the recurrence of PolioMyelitis was due to ignorance and religion. But now, more than 30 years later, going through it again has made me look at life again, and the role of ignorance and religion was not as clear cut as I thought it was “deja vu all over” again when I was hearing of people refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.