Annually, tuberculosis, an infectious but preventable disease, claims the lives of about 1.5 million people globally. On the bright side, thousands are diagnosed and cured of the viral infection every year. However, many of these survivors still live with scars of the infection in the form of complications, trauma and stigma, Alfred Olufemi writes.
In late 2013, at the age of 13, Ibitoye Oluwatobi felt a throbbing pain in his chest but brushed it off, hoping that it was one that would disappear with time. But against his expectation, as months went by, the pain became more pronounced and excruciating. At a point, he could no longer maintain an upright posture when standing.
“I would have pains in my chest and sometimes at my back. It felt as if someone was hitting me consistently. It later affected my movement. Each time I tried to stand straight, I would bend to the side,” he told our correspondent.
After months of enduring the recurring pains, Oluwatobi’s spinal cord was affected and any attempt to walk came with so much difficulty.
He was later diagnosed with Tuberculosis Spondylitis, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, long bones and joints. It is also referred to as Bone TB.
He was immediately placed on medications and treated for TB at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba.
Aside from being placed on a treatment regimen, it was discovered that Oluwatobi required corrective surgery to repair the damage done to his spine.
He later got an implant in his spinal column to straighten it and the surgical procedure cost the family almost N1m.
After spending a year treating the ailment, Oluwatobi was back on his feet again and life went back to normal for him and his parents.
“Before the surgery, I could not walk for eleven months. It was during that one year of treatment and surgery that I was able to walk,” he recalled.
Sadly, little did Oluwatobi know that his healthy state would be short-lived and that life would take a turn for the worse.
Second surgery and yet another required
Nearly five years after the surgery, Oluwatobi started feeling the same pain he felt at the onset of the disease. Doctors told his parents that it was not tuberculosis this time but implant failure.
Apparently, the device which was placed inside his spine to straighten it, had failed.
In 2018, he was again wheeled into the theatre for the implant to be removed. Unfortunately, according to the young man, the procedure worsened his condition.
He recounted, “It was affecting my back. They called it implant failure. At that time, I could still walk a little. But after they removed the implant, I could not walk again.”
According to the Spine Centre Atlanta, a medical facility in the United States, spinal implants can fail due to diverse reasons that include hardware failure, fracture, dislocation and poor implant choice.
Currently, Oluwatobi, who is 21 years old, can only stand with the support of a walking aid. He told PUNCH Healthwise that mobility had become a great challenge to him.
He said, “To move from one end of the room to another causes me so much pain and great discomfort. I can only stand with support. I feel pains from the waist to my legs.”
Nevertheless, the hope of Oluwatobi getting back on his feet lies in a third surgery, which has been tentatively scheduled for May subject to availability of funding.
Burdened family
Ibitoye Olasunkanmi is Oluwatobi’s mother. The fashion designer said that the family is desperately in need of over N2m for the third surgery, post-surgery care and other miscellaneous expenses.
The 47-year-old said the family is helpless and already burdened financially due to his health condition.
She told PUNCH Healthwise that the two previous surgeries and post-surgery care drained the family’s already lean purse and so, she does not see the possibility of a third surgery now, despite raising the sum of N1.6m through crowdfunding
PUNCH Healthwise gathered from Oluwatobi that one major reason for the family’s inability to afford the third surgery was that his father, who worked with an oil firm, lost his job in 2022.
The young man fears that the rising inflation in the country could lead to a hike in the cost of his surgery.
Voicing his fears, he said, “We have been able to raise N1.6m and we need about N2m. You know that prices of things keep changing daily. I hope by the time we come up with the money, the surgery wouldn’t have become more expensive”
Unfulfilled dreams
PUNCH Healthwise gathered that amid the challenging health condition, Oluwatobi got admitted into Yaba College of Technology, Lagos state, to study accountancy. But he had to forfeit the admission because of his health.
“It was four years ago. Because I could not walk then, I couldn’t go on with my admission processes. I was admitted to study accountancy,” he recalled with a pained expression.
He, however, believe that with the help and intervention of well meaning Nigerians, non-governmental organsiations or the government, he could get a second shot at life and fulfill his dream of walking and becoming a chartered accountant.
Exhausted 20 bottles of cough syrups before diagnosis
While Oluwatobi is grappling with the challenges of raising funds for corrective surgery and aftercare, Jide Alawode, a 28-year-old data scientist, based in Lagos state, faces a more dehumanising form of challenge – stigmatisation.
He was diagnosed with TB in 2020, after months of treating a severe cough that usually left him drained.
At the time the diagnosis was conducted at the University Teaching Hospital in Ibadan, Oyo State, it was learnt that he had exhausted twenty 60ml bottles of cough syrup.
Alawode said although he was not vomiting blood, his faeces was bloodstained.
“I lost so much weight and was a shadow of my healthy self,” he said, adding, “It was detected after two months of frequent hospital visits. At first, it was an ordinary cough that was diagnosed, but after a month of treatment without improvement, I was asked to carry out an X-ray and some other tests. Nothing was detected until another doctor asked me to do a sputum test. At the time, I was residing in Ibadan then. I took my sputum to the National Tuberculosis Centre inside UCH. After one week, I was diagnosed with TB.”
The Data Scientist was to later discover that he contracted the disease while conducting research on charcoal production in a community in Oyo state.
Job loss, stigma
Alawode said the disease affected his productivity at work and eventually led to the termination of his appointment.
He recounted, “It cost me my work because I wasn’t productive at all during that period. Before I started my treatment, I was coughing consistently. Even if I am sitting in a room with a cooling unit, I will be sweating profusely.
“One of the reasons cited in the letter of termination given to me was that I had not been productive for a while. Before that period, they were plans to relocate me to Abuja due to how efficient I was. Already, I had spoken to my landlord about relocating to Abuja in February. It was that same February that I was diagnosed with TB and I had to stay in Ibadan or somewhere close to UCH to receive treatment.”
Alawode also recalled how his TB history affected his chances of securing a new job after he was fired from his previous employment.
He said, “When I completed my treatment, I decided to take two months break for proper recuperation. When I started job hunting, the first question every employer asked me was why I left my former place of employment. As soon as I tell them I had TB and my productivity became low within the eight months earmarked for treatment, I won’t hear from them again.”
Alawode, who now works remotely for a Dubai-based firm, advised the government to place more emphasis on TB sensitisation programmes.
Curable disease killing millions
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by a type of bacterium called mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is spread when an infected person sneezes and someone else inhales the expelled droplets.
Experts noted that early detection is key in the treatment of TB and that it takes between six to 12 months.
Although the most prevalent form of Tuberculosis is that of the lungs, the bacteria can infect other organs of the body as was the case with Oluwatobi.
A Professor of Public Health at the University of Ilorin, Tanimola Akande, explained that bone TB occurs when tuberculosis is contracted and it spreads outside of the lungs.
“Tuberculosis is normally spread from person to person through the air. After you contract tuberculosis, it can travel through the blood from the lungs or lymph nodes into the bones, spine, or joints,” he added.
Prof. Akande said although TB treatment is free in Nigeria, the federal government’s programme does not cover complications that arise from TB like in the case of Oluwatobi.
Despite TB being a preventable and curable disease, the World Health Organisation says an estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2020.
In Nigeria, around 245,000 people died from the disease while about 590,000 new cases were recorded.
Speaking with PUNCH Healthwise, Executive Director of KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation in Nigeria, Dr. Bethrand Odume, said Nigeria is number one in Africa when it comes to TB burden and number six in the whole world.
The public health expert decried the low detection rate of TB in the country and blamed it for the widespread.
He said; “It will interest you to know that over these years, it was last year [2021] that the National TB and Leprosy Control Programme was able to detect over 200,000 of 450,000 cases. For the past years, it has been hovering around 100, 000, leaving a very huge gap of over 70 per cent.
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