I remember the last time someone very close to me stopped taking his medication for almost two months. He quietly replaced it with local herbs that she had frequently seen repeatedly on her Facebook page, run by a random lady who has fewer than three hundred followers with no professional certification of any medical training on her page that can back her up. We checked her profile: no previous or recent certificate, no affiliation with any hospital or medical lab, nothing beyond some of her videos that she is always confident running her mouth about.
He didn't tell anyone about the herbs, we got to realize that after he was getting weaker day by day and he was taken to the hospital, where he was examined by the experts who asked him directly why he had stopped taking the two drugs that she prescribed for him, which had been working effectively ever since he started using them, like, three years ago.
After I heard it, different thoughts came across my mind, especially now when I open my social media pages and I see all sorts of health advice flying up and down from people who only have access to the internet, a phone, and social media. No qualifications whatsoever, only engaging the audience blindly. I came across a video some time ago of an Australian influencer, Belle Gibson, who built an entire wellness empire and told people how she cured herself of cancer, a cancer she never had. And a lot of people who actually had cancer and were terribly sick of it followed everything she was saying and selling for them because her fraudulent activities were finally exposed.
Are some of these influencers we have today permitted or qualified to speak on the things they are famous for? My answer is, mostly, no. Because looking at them, a lot of them are after reach, not that they are competent, but the practice and confidence they have on camera has never for once been proof of anything beyond good delivery.
But I'll come back home and will not keep a blind eye and do as if the doctors in our neighborhood are blameless in why a lot of these things keep happening. The doctor of that close person I mentioned gives him maybe four rushed per visit and never says anything on why the medication works. She just prescribes the drugs in writing and moves on to the next thing on her list. People are not picking ignorance over the experts in the game. Most of the time, they are choosing what they feel is right for them over what actually works, a accessible explanation over hurried authority.
The gullible online followers who follow blindly are not actually what need fixing. It's the healthcare system with no proper sanctions and so stretched that a stranger with no certification and proper training can outcompete a real medical professional by simply having the time to sit and explain something in a detailed way.
Thank you for reading.
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