Orthodox medicine under scrutiny in Glo-sponsored Professor Johnbull

Reekado Bank

The latest episode of the entertaining TV Drama Series, Professor Johnbull, sponsored by the fully integrated telecommunications company, Globacom, draws attention to the activities of orthodox medicine practitioners, their "one-drug-cures-all" tendency and the attendant effects on public health.

Entitled Street Doctors, the episode exposes the threat such quack medical practitioners pose to the nation's public health orientation, and calls on all to make conscious efforts to  patronise only registered and government approved health facilities. It also urges pharmaceutical personnel to dispense only medications duly prescribed by doctors.

While not totally doubting the efficacy of orthodox medicine or the relevance of the practice in modern day Nigeria, Street Doctors propose that it is foolhardy for anyone to believe that there is a "one-stop drug"  which cures all ailments including "curiosity", as claimed by the peddlers of such wonder drugs.

Airing on NTA Network, NTA International on DSTV Channel 251 and NTA on StarTimes on Tuesday at 8.30 p.m. with a repeat broadcasting Friday on the same channels and at the same time, the sitcom, once again, lives up to its billing as the moral conscience of the society.

Parading the lead character, Professor Johnbull (Kanayo O. Kanayo) alongside other regulars of the sitcom such as Olaniyi (Yomi Fash-Lanso), Caro (Mercy Johnson Okojie), Flash (Stephen Odimgbe), Samson (Ogus Baba), Abadnego (Martins Nebo) and Churchill (Jnr. Pope Odonwodo), Street Doctors also plays up Samson as an unrepentant street boy, who is full of adventures and whose street sense always gets the better part of him. Samson lures Flash into peddling orthodox medicine.

In the episode too, Marvin Records star, Reekado Banks, makes a brief appearance.  Globacom encourages Nigerians to tune in to the episode to know whether his role as a registered pharmacist changed the course of the episode.  Did he, as a pharmacist, live by the rules of the Hippocratic Oath governing the practice of medicine, surgery and drugs? 

KOK is also shown in the episode as a man who does not lose his comportment irrespective of challenges.  How did he react when the health of his son, Churchill, is threatened by the administration of "one-drug-cures-all" given to him by Caro, who purchased it from Flash?

Did he counsel his proximate people as usual over the usual drug peddlers?