By Dr. Nanah Fofana-Sesay, USA.
A couple of weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine who resides in USA lost her mother in Sierra Leone.
Upon calling her to sympathize for the loss, she bitterly complained that her mother’s death was the result of medical malpractice.
According to her, the mother was being managed by a medical doctor for medical symptoms with the most prominent symptoms being painful legs, craving for sweets, loss of appetite and weight loss to name a few.
Tests (unknown ones) were conducted by the doctor as the leg pains worsened..
All test results were normal, according to the doctor.
The leg pains became unbearable for the elderly lady for which she turned to native medications.
The elderly lady left her residence in Freetown and travelled to the provinces hoping to resolve the ongoing acute lower extremities pains.
The native doctor gave her onetime treatment of wrapping heated pounded raw green leaves on both legs for an unknown period and then removed.
Upon removal of the wrappings, the elderly lady’s legs were noted with diffuse blisters bilaterally.
The condition rapidly got worse as the blisters became infected ulcers. The ulcers became necrotic, the necrosis resulted in gangrene and the gangrene resulted in septicemia (bacteria/infection in the blood stream).
Before giving you a disposition of the elderly lady, you need to know the qualification of the main management team for this elderly lady.
1. A purportedly qualified medical doctor trained in Sierra Leone.
2. The daughter of the elderly lady who is purportedly educated as a registered nurse at the baccalaureate level in Sierra Leone.
Disposition for the elderly lady:
At the request of her daughter in the USA, she was taken to another doctor in Freetown where she was diagnosed with "DIABETES MELLITUS."
With this diagnosis and the poor prognosis of the elderly lady, her daughter from USA confronted the old doctor who responded that the lady did not have diabetes.
The USA daughter also confronted her sister who is a registered nurse-BSN in Sierra Leone who responded that she is not familiar with diabetes.
My analysis of the situation to the daughter in USA was based on the information presented to me which includes but not limited to:
1. The lady was suffering from diabetic neuropathy and thus the worsening pains on her lower extremities.
2. For her to develop neuropathy, she had to have suffered from diabetes for a long time.
3. She was craving for sweets, had poor appetite, and weight loss which means the glucose is not utilized by the cell to be used by the body for energy (glycolysis) instead it was dumping the glucose in the blood stream causing hyperglycemia (elevated blood sugar).
Diabetes Mellitus (type 1 or 11) are one of the most common medical conditions globally.
4. The elderly lady died one week ago and will be buried in Freetown on October 13, 2022. May her soul rest in peace.
It’s takes an extremely poor educational system for any educated provider to miss symptoms and treatment of diabetes.
The moral of this narrative is to impact the deplorable educational system in Sierra Leone.
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