By Sylvester Ojenagbon
I sat down recently in a popular community pharmacy, waiting to be attended to. Then came a fairly educated middle-aged man who seemed to be a familiar face to the pharmacist on duty. “Give me that drug I bought that day,” he requested, pointing to a particular medication on the shelf. The pharmacist hesitated for a moment, then asked, “What do you want to use it for?”
Without thinking about it, the man gave a response I thought was the most ridiculous I had ever heard: he wanted to use it for typhoid, which he did not have at that point. He said he just wanted to take it as a preventive measure since he worked hard and did not want to start having body pains. The pharmacist had to explain to him the dangers of taking antibiotics without a proper diagnosis and prescription. Although the man left without the drug, the pharmacist confided that he was certain he would come back when someone else was on duty or go somewhere else to buy it.
