Professor Ibironke Akinsete is a woman of many parts. The expert in the area of women’s health and chairman, Pathcare Nigeria, has impacted on the lives of many. Yetunde Oladeinde had an encounter with the amiable woman who describes herself as a senior citizen trying to balance work and family at the National Conference of Business and Professional Women, which took place at the Chelsea Hotel, Abuja recently.
HAVING combined her successful career with her marriage to a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, she says that “it is so sad that the upbringing of our children is now left for housemaids. It is important to give them more time because they are your legacy. Young mothers should take their children around and discuss with them more often. If you have all the money and properties and your children do not turn out well then you haven’t done well. They are the next generation and we will all be endangered species if we do not take care of their interests.
Apart from the children, women, she stressed, must take good care of their health at the different stages of life to be successful. “Health is the new wealth, and prevention is better than cure. In order to enjoy your financial success, we must ensure good health. This is the absence of disease and complete mental, physical and social well-being. There are so many factors responsible for this and they include ignorance, poverty and disease which affect our welfare. In addition, to this you find that nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, genetics, environment, emotion and stress have an impact on our overall health. All these are intertwined and things are better when detected early. This also makes it better when it comes to cost of managing the disease.”
Akinsete goes on: “A recent statistics from the World Diabetes Organisation says Africa has the highest mortality because a lot of people who have the disease do not know. It is at the end stage that they find out. When we eat our food, the carbohydrate is broken down and the glucose is needed to do the digestion. Diabetes can be due to the lack of insulin by the pancreas or when it is insensitive. There are three types of insulin; the first is the lack in childhood and they would be injected for life. The type two is when there is not enough, here insulin production diminishes. About 90 per cent diabetes cases are type 2 while 10 per cent is type 1. There is also gestational diabetes which occurs in pregnant women and they have high blood sugar. Once the pregnancy is over, it falls and they go back.“
She goes on to talk about some of its symptoms: “Excessive thirst, excessive hunger, frequency in urination, tiredness and weight loss are some of the things to watch out for. Diabetes is a leading cause of death and sickness. It destroys the eyes and causes kidney, stroke and heart diseases.”
Some of the risk factors are overweight, family history, age and diabetes during pregnancy. “If someone in your family has had it then you are predisposed to it. Screening includes fasting, blood glucose, random and the new HGBAC used for diabetes and pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes means that your blood sugar is not normal but you are not yet diabetic. You can control this by avoiding sugar and carbohydrates which is usually broken down to sugar. The risk increases with age and we need to watch what we eat and our lifestyle. Unfortunately, what you hear is that the devil has done its worst when they lose a loved one.”
Next, Akinsete says high blood pressure is also very common in the society today. “High blood pressure is expressed in two ways, the systolic (high) and the diastolic (relaxed). Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80. If you are in the pre-hypertension bracket, you can stop it by decreasing the salt in your diet. Here, a lot of us are salt addicts but the salt you take increases your risk of hypertension.”
She stressed that there is a need to check the label of products on the shelf for what it contains before buying. “Cholesterol is needed in the body to function but too much of it clogs the blood vessel and it is a major cause of heart diseases. It is higher than average risk if you are male and over 35 years or female over 45 years. There are two types of cholesterol; the good and the bad. The bad type leads to the hardening of the arteries and narrowing of the arteries. When you go for screening, you must be fasting. It would give you a complete blood lipid profile which would tell you the level of good and bad cholesterol.”
Akinsete also talks about cancer and some of the reasons why it appears to be on the increase. “Analgesics, bleaching creams and some herbal supplements can put people at risk for cancer. For breast cancer, which is common with women, it is important to note that not all lumps are cancerous. Some of the reasons for its occurrence include starting menstrual period earlier or later, being older at birth of first child, someone who has never had babies or having a mammogram before the age of 50. Others include early menopause or family history of cancer. Prostate cancer, however, is common in African and African-American men. A medical examination must include a rectal examination of the prostrate with the prostate specific antigen.”
While talking about cancer of the colon which develops from polyps, growth on the inner surface of the colon, she goes down memory lane to recount a personal experience. “My husband and I travelled to America to see my daughter, a doctor who practices in America. She said we should have the colon test which was not a difficult thing to do. Lo and behold, they saw small polyps and it was removed. What if I had not done that test 15 years ago and repeated it five years after. We may be telling a different story and the good news is that there are so many hospitals that are doing it here now. Colonoscopy is what I did and the faecial stool test is what should be done every year. Unfortunately, there are so many mushroom laboratories around, if you must carry out a test, make sure that the results are accurate and reliable.”
Akinsete, who was the chairman of blood transfusion screening in Lagos for six years, also emphasised the fact that recent findings still place women at a higher risk of HIV infection. “Women are at risk because it is usually transmitted to them. We are sexually active and you do not know where your partner has been. The prevalence is still 4.1 and there is still no cure or vaccine. Women are the ones who are likely to take blood after delivery. Blood transfusion should be properly monitored and Lagos State passed a law about two years ago.
