Health

By Uzair Adam Imam 

Kano State has recorded more than 2.8 million hospital visits due to the menace of malaria in 2021, the Commissioner for Health, Aminu Tsanyawa, said.

Tsanyawa spoke yesterday at a press briefing to commemorate 2022 World Malaria Day.

This, according to Tsanyawa, made the disease the single most common reason for about 60 per cent of outpatient visitations and consultations in Kano state. 

However, Tsanyawa recalled that the Kano state government, in collaboration with its partners, did its best to mitigate the menace.

He said, “between July and October 202, the state government, in collaboration with its partners, administered more than 13,110,365 doses of malaria prevention drugs (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and Amodiaquine SP+AQ) with a view to preventing malaria and deaths in children under the age of five.”

Furthermore, Tsanyawa sounded a clarion call on residents to avail their children aged 3-59 months for the forthcoming 4-day cycles of mass distribution of malaria prevention drugs. 

By Ja’afar Ja’afar

As your little one starts to explore the world of solid foods, he will learn to differentiate the tastes of different food items. This is where the struggle of a parent begins. Despite being a picky eater, making sure your child gets all the required nutrients can be frustrating. At times this frustration makes parents go overboard, and they pressurise their children to eat. Even though done with good intentions, force-feeding is never a good idea when it comes to the developing years of your child.

What is force-feeding?

Force-feeding is basically forcing your child to finish the whole served food against their will. When happy mealtimes turn into a war between parents and children with a plate full of healthy foods in between, parents generally end up using force-feeding as the ultimate strike. Even though it seems harmless, it never leads to a “win-win” situation and can do more harm than good to your child.

Instead of force-feeding your child to eat a particular food, try to prepare different variants of dishes, including that food along with the food groups your child enjoys eating.

How do parents force-feed?

Here are a few common ways parents tend to force-feed their children –

• Deciding on your own what, when and how much your child should eat.
• Nagging, scolding or threatening your child to finish his plate.
• Bribing or blackmailing your child into finishing his food and rewarding him later.
• Punishing your children if they don’t eat.
• Comparing your child with siblings or other children to make them feel shame or competitiveness.
• Literally forcing food into your child’s mouth and making him swallow.
• Ignoring his pleas to eat less and using fear to force him to eat.

Force-feeding seems to get the work done for the time being and may give you the “mission accomplished” feeling too. However, it actually can have harmful effects on your child. Let’s discuss seven negative effects of force-feeding that are usually seen among children:

1. Destruction of your child’s natural appetite

The natural desire to eat is known as one’s appetite. During mealtime, constant nagging and force-feeding will make your child lose interest in food and disrupt your child’s natural appetite. Forcing your child too much may lead to him puking out everything and hating even the idea of eating.

2. Strong aversion towards food

Studies have shown that force-fed kids often end up developing a strong aversion toward food. The negativity associated with food makes them traumatised and nauseous. This aversion sticks around even when they grow up as these foods continue to subconsciously remind them of the panic and bad memories of childhood.

3. Stressful meal-times

It is in human nature to avoid anything that causes stress or discomfort. The only way a child will accept something is if they enjoy it while doing it. Forcefully feeding your child healthy foods on his plate can leave him with a stressful and unpleasant experience. Hence instinctively, he will only learn to hate mealtimes and continue to struggle with food.

4. Inclination towards sugary or junk foods

Force-fed children often learn to develop unhealthy food habits. This happens because a force-fed child never learns when to stop eating as they get accustomed to overeating during those force-feeding sessions. Also, due to their hatred towards healthy foods, they get attracted more to sugary or junk foods.

5. Lose control over their eating habits

As parents, your ultimate focus should be on making your child less dependent on you and learning to do everything themselves. But, the more you take control and force-feed your child, the less control he will have over his own eating habits. This will hamper his life and food habits even as he grows up.

6. Development of eating disorders

Since force-fed children never learn how much food their bodies require, they tend to overeat or undereat even when they grow up. This loss of control over eating habits can lead to serious eating disorders such as obesity, anorexia, bulimia, etc.

7. Disrupted eating pattern

Every human body has a different food capacity and metabolism rate. The amount you decide to give your child may be much more than his capacity to digest. If you force-feed him to finish the entire serving even after he tells you that he is full, you are feeding him an excess amount. He will need more time to digest that portion, so he won’t be hungry when you serve his next meal. As the cycle continues, your child’s natural digestive pattern will end up getting disrupted.

Ja’afar Ja’afar sent this article via mrjaafar64@gmail.com.

By Dr. Khadijah Tijani

The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs located in the abdomen. Their main function is to detoxify the body by removing waste products and excess water in form of urine. They also perform other vital functions such as regulation of blood pressure and secretion of hormones like erythropoietin (responsible for red blood cells production) and vitamin D (maintaining bone health, etc).

Any insult to the kidneys could result in irreversible damage, and kidney failure is not only expensive to treat but extremely distressing to the victims and their caregivers. It is quite worrisome that almost every day I scroll down my timeline on Facebook, there is always one person putting up a fundraiser for themselves or someone else suffering from kidney failure.

There are some causes of kidney injury that can neither be predicted nor prevented (such as acute haemorrhage, burns, congenital disorders, etc). But there are also some preventable causes that we should be aware of and guard against. When it comes to kidney health, prevention is definitely better than cure. Here are 7 simple tips on how to maintain healthy kidneys…

1. DRINK PLENTY OF WATER
Apart from regulating the amount of water in the body, the kidney itself depends on adequate water (and blood) supply. Dehydration puts a strain on the kidneys and if this reaches a certain threshold, the kidneys begin to shut down. Dehydration also predisposes you to develop kidney stones, which can damage your kidneys by obstructing the pathway of urine flow. Aim for 3 litres of water daily. You may need more or less depending on the weather and your activity level.

2. DO REGULAR HEALTH CHECKS
There are certain medical conditions that “kill” the kidneys slowly. These diseases are silent killers in the sense that they are often not manifested by clear signs and symptoms until they have damaged the kidneys and other vital organs to a considerable extent. Chief among these diseases are HYPERTENSION and DIABETES. Checking your blood pressure and sugar levels periodically will ensure early detection and quick intervention.

3. EAT RIGHT
The importance of a healthy diet cannot be overemphasized. Avoid junk snacks and sugary drinks. Take a balanced proportion of every class of food but pay attention to more fruits and vegetables. Clean and healthy foods protect your kidneys from excess toxic wastes, therefore the more healthy food you ingest, the better.

4. STOP DRUG ABUSE
The kidneys are actively involved in the metabolism of many drugs. When you take medications (either orthodox or herbal concoctions) indiscriminately, you are exposing your kidneys to more workload than they can handle. Also, some drugs are inherently toxic to the kidneys, so if you have a history of kidney disease, your doctor will help you adjust the dose or change to a less toxic alternative.

5. STOP SMOKING AND ALCOHOL
Cigarette smoking and alcohol ingestion have direct effects on the kidneys because these products increase the amount of toxins that your kidneys need to deal with. Hence, it is clear that avoiding them will be beneficial to the kidneys and the entire body.

6. DON’T TAKE ANY DISEASE FOR GRANTED
Whenever you fall ill, contact your doctor and get treated as soon as possible. Simple infections can become complicated if ignored or poorly managed. For example, malaria is a known cause of kidney failure. When infected red blood cells are broken down in large numbers, they produce a high concentration of toxic substances which can damage the kidneys if proper treatment is not sought.

7. MANAGE CHRONIC HEALTH ISSUES
Some chronic illnesses pose a great threat to the kidneys. Examples are diabetes, hypertension, sickle cell disease, cancer, etc. Because of the vital role of the kidneys in maintaining a healthy body, they are easily affected by any deviation from the norm. Hence, individuals who have any of these diseases should take extra care by managing their conditions well and doing regular “kidney function tests” to ascertain how healthy the kidney is and detect early signs of kidney failure.

To sum up, early signs of kidney disease may not be easily recognized by people, so, it is extremely important to take precautions against the preventable causes and seek prompt treatment for any medical condition that may result in irreversible kidney damage.

Dr. Khadijah Tijani
askodoctorkt@gmai.com
Ibadan, Nigeria.