She advised individuals with a family history of kidney diseases to ensure that they went for regular kidney function tests as kidney diseases could also be hereditary.

Okunola also advised that people should inculcate the habit of checking their blood sugar level and their blood pressure, cultivate the healthy eating habit and take only prescribed drugs as directed.

A correspondent of NAN spoke with some residents of Jos who indulged in self-medication, including Miss Simi Chollom, a student of the Plateau State Polytechnic. Chollom said whenever she had a fever, she just takes anti-malarial drug instead of going to the hospital to ascertain the actual cause of the fever. On her part, Mrs. Mary Bitrus said she stopped self-medicating after she almost lost her life.

Bitrus said she was treating malaria which wasn’t abating, without knowing that she had hepatitis B, until she went to the hospital for proper checks and the actual cause of her ailment was diagnosed. She vowed never to indulge in the act again.

Source: Dailytrust