‘Dangerous!’
Bush medicine alone puts patients at risk, says doc
DESPITE THE increased accessibility of effective medications on the local market to help people manage heart-related illness, many are still opting to use alternative medicine as their only form of treatment, according to consultant cardiologist Dr Handel Emery.
The physician said there continues to be a tug of war in overcoming cultural habits and beliefs that self-medication is just as, if not more, effective than formal means of treatment.
“There is still the notion that someone can treat hypertension with bush teas or garlic, and so on ... . I am not saying that those things don’t work, but we know that they are not as effective at treating hypertension as established medications. So the dependency on that alone is dangerous and is hurting a lot of our patients,”he said.
Speaking to The Gleaner at the formal opening of the Winchester Heart Centre in St Andrew last Friday, Emery said that in order to effectively tackle the problem, there needs to be a vigorous education campaign, particularly targeting the nation’s youth.
“I find that the younger persons, if we have the opportunity to intervene early and to really get them to embrace, to buy into a culture of taking medication – and I think if we do that 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road when they are in a situation when they are developing these conditions – we’ll find that they are probably more compliant with medications,” the medical doctor said.
ACCESS TO MEDICATION
Emery emphasised that there was no issue with accessibility to medications to treat heart disease, adding that drugs were relatively affordable.
“We have a lot of generics in Jamaica across a wide range of different conditions and that makes it affordable for patients to have access to efficacious medications for treating things like hypertension, heart disease, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and so on,” he said.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Jamaica, claiming, on average, at least 6,000 lives annually.