PixabayI have this patient who has chronic kidney disease complicated by hepatitis B. He had a transplant and the transplant is also failing.
My colleague was meant to do a fasting blood glucose for him. She went there in the morning and did it.
His fasting blood glucose was normal.
When she was about capping the lancet, she sustained a needle prick injury.
She didn’t know he had hepatitis B. She checked through his folder and discovered he had hepatitis B.
She rushed to the tap and immediately pressed the finger and put it under running water for 10 minutes.
After that, she rushed to me and told me what happened.
I was so angry and I asked her if she had taken her complete vaccines. Unfortunately, she had only taken 2 out of the 3 doses.
I became scared. And we informed our seniors' ad she was told to run some tests.
She was told to check how many antibodies she had in her blood capable of fighting the virus.
While waiting, we decided to ask for the cost of the treatment.
She is meant to take oral immunoglobulins which are antibodies. When we cost it, it was about 400 dollars.
This is much for any intern doctor working in Nigeria. I mean, she earns 350 dollars a month, she has a child and she is currently not being paid by the government.
Her antibody titers came out and it was high and she was told she only needs to take the booster dose.
She is not comfortable taking the booster dose as the most effective cure is taking immunoglobulins
What is the moral lesson?
- Take your vaccines seriously. Complete the dose.
- Hepatitis B is one of the most infective viruses known to humans. Sometimes, we have micro-cuts on our skin we do not know about. A small contact with a person with hepatitis B puts you at a greater than 90% chance of having hepatitis B
- Some people feel hepatitis B is worse than HIV and this goes to say that you should get vaccinated as soon as possible.
- Know your antibody titer values. If it is not adequate take booster doses and check in the next 6 months.
- Hepatitis B is one of the worst conditions and it should be known that if it is not treated it can progress to liver cancer
- Finally, protect yourself as prevention is better than cure.
Thank you for reading.
I should do a detailed post on hepatitis B