The sudden death of the governorship aspirant of All Progressives Congress (APC), Prince Abubakar Audu has added to the increasing cases of sudden death syndrome in the country.
Audu’s death Sunday evening took Nigerians with shock and disbelief.
His case is not an isolated one. Sudden death syndrome, which only few people have heard about, is becoming too common in the country.
Nigerians are now seeing more victims in many families. Almost every Nigerian knows somebody who died of stroke, or heart attack – and died suddenly.
Dr Christopher Otabor, Medical Director, Alliance Hospital, Abuja, observed that the incidence of sudden death is increasing in Nigeria, but like most other diseases and phenomena, there is paucity of statistics.
Another medical expert, Dr. Biodun Ogungbo said, “Sometimes, we ascribe the cause of death to witchcraft, enemies or some evil. So, we don’t get honest statistics about this information. But it’s on the increase. We are seeing more and more people with this kind of problem. Stroke is on the increase in Nigeria and heart attack is also on the increase.”
He said that with the stress level in the country now arising from the economic downturn, politics and re-election, the phenomenon of sudden death has become inevitable.
Ogungbo, who is a brain expert, said, “People are dying from stroke and heart attack and the major cause of that in our country is hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Yet, these are conditions that could be prevented.”
He explained the sudden death syndrome whereby people just slump and die, “is caused by heart attack and brain attack. People are having stroke and they are having heart attack. Those are the two conditions that kill immediately.”
He disclosed that about 50 percent of people are not aware that they have hypertension when they are actually coming to hospital with stroke or heart attack.
“They never check their blood pressure or those who have checked have ignored it doing something else. But we need to keep preaching it. We need to let people know the real solution; the antidote, the cure, the prevention of sudden death syndrome is to get out there and exercise.”
Otabor, who is also a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, stated that sudden death is most often caused either by a cardiovascular event or a cerebral event, adding that cardiovascular event refers to a pathology within the heart or the blood vessels.
He explained, “The commonest cause of sudden death among adults is cardiac arrest which means sudden stoppage of the heart. Before the heart can stop beating suddenly, something major would have gone wrong. There are usually underlying conditions such as poorly controlled blood pressure, blockage of the coronary arteries which supplies the heart muscles, blood clot within the blood vessels which can detach and block major arteries like the ones supplying the lungs.”
According to the medical director, other possible causes of cardiac arrest are diseases of the heart valves, drugs that can depress the heart or make it overwork or straight ingestion of poison.
He said people at risk include the middle aged and elderly from 45 years and above, patients with longstanding hypertension, poorly controlled diabetes, obese people with body mass index above 30kg/m2, people with high blood cholesterol especially the low density lipoprotein, people with underlying heart diseases, etc.
The best way to address sudden death, Otabor stated, is to address the risk factors.
“You cannot know most of the hazards you carry except you have been checked by a doctor. Annual medical checkup is recommended. Many Nigerians are sitting on a time bomb healthwise. It can explode anytime. Ignorance can be very costly. In fact, it can cost lives.”
Ogungbo added, “Exercise seems to be our cure against those horrible diseases.”
He condemned the use of unorthodox medicine in the treatment of stroke, saying, “I don’t believe in it, of course. Even we as doctors know that there are different types of stroke. There is small stroke, there is big stroke. There are strokes that if you don’t do anything, people will recover. That means part of the brain is not permanently damaged. Sometimes, the small stroke is a warning, which means there is a bigger stroke coming. So, if you ignore the small stroke because you’ve gone to church, to the herbalist, to the traditional medicine practitioner and they tell you that the stroke has gone, you are okay, it could have been that the stroke was actually a small warning. You would have recovered even if you didn’t do anything. But what we doctors do is different from every other people. We find out why you had a stroke, then we do everything we can to prevent another stroke. So, our major job is actually to prevent stroke, not to treat it but to prevent it.”
According to him, the way to prevent stroke is to do exercise, keep the weight down, look after hypertension, and look after diabetes.
Otabor added, “Though life is in God’s hands, He has given us wisdom to prolong it here on earth; so let’s take that step.”
-Leadership