Feature Stories

Vanessa Carter nearly lost her face to antibiotic resistance.

She likely acquired a bacterial infection while in hospital during one of many complicated facial surgeries. None of the many doctors she had in the first six years of those surgeries ever mentioned antibiotic resistance to her. Because she was oblivious to the dangers of stopping an antibiotic drug or even an antibiotic ointment after a couple days when it appeared to not be working, she sees herself as part of the complication – back then. 

Now, she is a force for common knowledge.

Owolabi’s wife of 19 years died after a brain tumour was successfully removed. He tries not to blame the hospital where she contracted the infection that killed her. He understands sterile conditions are difficult to maintain in even the best of Nigerian facilities. And he believes his wife was treated in one of the country’s best hospitals.

She had been sick for months with vague symptoms wrongly diagnosed as a premenopausal state. She was hospitalized at one point and discharged. When her symptoms worsened, an emergency MRI revealed the tumour.

Glorious Erhuanga is rarely ill, she says. Which is a good thing because she does not care much for medical drugs. And because, by her own admission, she is an abuser of drugs. “I do abuse drugs in the sense that I don’t completely do the course. If you feel strong enough, you stop. But your illness is not gone completely, they [pathogens] hide in your body,” she explains.