When ‌‌doctors talk about patients in the hospital, we so often begin with age. A 75-year-old man with shortness of breath. A 30-year-old woman with joint swelling. Knowing our patient’s age allows us to focus on the most likely diagnoses and to develop a mental image of the patient before we enter the room. But it also serves another purpose. ‌Doctors find ourselves using age to frame the patient’s story and in effect to grade its degree of tragedy. A college student dying from respiratory failure after the flu is unacceptable, an end we must fight against with all that…

I’m sure he expected the firestorm. As is his custom, he primed and released it to explode at his own time and season. If the letter by former President Olusegun Obasanjo endorsing Labour Party’s Peter Obi had gone unnoticed, uncriticised, and un-replied, then it would not have been Obasanjo’s letter. The letter had barely landed when the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and, in fact, the Presidency all pounced, with the mildest of them all from the PDP. Whatever the misgivings of the affected parties, I’m sure most might agree on the central message:…

Debola, one of the sons of ex-governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel, has expressed concern over neglect of physically challenged Nigerians. He said being a disabled person in Nigeria is lonely and scary, adding that when planning for major events, people like him are never put into consideration. In a Twitter thread, Debola said even with government infrastructures, the plight of physically challenged persons is never put into consideration. He wrote, “To be a disabled Nigerian is a lonely, scary and isolated place. I have often struggled to articulate my Nigerian experience in a way people could understand. “There’s never…

My father told us the poignant story of his mother, my grandmother, giving birth to 14 children and only two of them survived. The gap between him and his only surviving sibling, my late Uncle, was roughly 10 years. In between them were more deceased siblings that could not survive the first few years of their lives. They were deemed “Abikus”. My grandmother died in her early fifties. Poor woman. She bore the brunt fourteen pregnancies. One is exhausting enough, but what about the emotional trauma of losing 12? As it turned out, those 12 deceased children were most likely…