Child health specialists in the country say only trained and qualified health workers should be allowed to administer injections, citing the potential health risk associated with injections given to babies by quacks.
Speaking in an interview with journalists, one of the experts, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Paediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Dr Beatrice Ezenwa, said that there are particular areas for giving an injection in the buttocks in both adults and children.
The paediatrician explained, “There are anatomical places where you can give an injection which you learn when you are in school.
“But quacks because they see people give injections in the buttocks, they feel that any part of the buttocks can be given injections and they cause problems.
Ezenwa noted that untrained health workers and auxiliary nurses who are not qualified to administer injections are the ones causing the problems.
“If somebody follows the guidelines and protocol, they are not likely to cause any problems. It is those who do not know the rules that cause problems”, the paediatrician added.
Another paediatrician, Dr. Olatunde Odusote, a Consultant Paediatrician and Head of the Division of Allergy, Dermatology and Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Paediatric and Child Health, also corroborated Ezenwa’s statement, saying there are ways to give injections in the buttocks without causing harm to the recipient.
He also noted that when a child has a polio infection and runs a fever if he or she is given an injection, it could make polio worse.
According to the health experts injections should not just be given in any part of the buttocks, warning that injecting somebody on the wrong side of the buttocks, could cause irreversible damage to the nerves.
