Lupus Day: Lupus Warriors NG sensitises, gives cash to patients
By Oluwaseyi Oduneye-Ogunwomoju
To celebrate the 2025 World Lupus Day, a non-governmental organisation, Lupus Warriors NG on Saturday organised a walk, sensitisation and free medication for the Lupus patients, to celebrate the day.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that no fewer than 100 Lupus patients were given free medications and money.
Miss Olatomiwa Ogunwomoju, the founder Lupus Warriors NG said that the significance of today’s awareness is to let people know more about the disease called Lupus.
Ogunwomoju said that knowing that early diagnosis can help you to manage the disease properly and live a meaningful life even if you are living with Lupus.
“Every May 10, we celebrate World Lupus Day, lupus is an auto immune disease, where your immune system attacks your body and the heathy tissue in your body and that can affect any part of your body.
“We are celebrating every Lupus warrior, people living with lupus. We are creating awareness so that people can know more about the disease and also help to spread the word.
“We gave money to lupus patients and free prescriptions to people who are living with the disease.
“Lupus is an auto immune disease, and it’s a disease that I’ve been living with for the last seven years, it will be eight years by December.
“When I got diagnized with lupus it affected my sight, I was blind for over a year and I’m still partially sighted.
“I still can’t see very well, it is very challenging, living with an awful condition and even with medication, hospital visits, it can be a lot with lupus, you have very high and low days but the most important thing is that I try to take my medication and stay positive.
“The finances can be very challenging, and that is the reason why I gave out free medication because the medication is not cheap and have I been able to manage.
“ It has been God and I know there are a lot of lupus patients out there that are finding it difficult to get their medications and be able to look after themselves properly.
“This is why we are trying to create this awareness so that people can support and lupus patients to live a meaningful life,” she said.
Ogunwomoju, however, appealed to the government at all level to do more on the awareness and work with rheumatologist in all the hospitals across Nigeria to make medications free.
“Most patients of this disease already have a disability because they have lupus.
“It would have affected their eyes, legs, or their hands, and it’s difficult to earn money as I can no longer do a 9-5 job because of my eyesight,” she said.
Dr Ibukunoluwa Dedeke, consultant rheumatologist University College Hospital (UCH) said that Lupus is a short for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE).
Dude said that it’s an autoimmune disease in which the immune system of a particular individual rather than just protecting them from infection, but some of it starts attacking the cells of the body.
“ The immune system of the human body are highly trained to recognize the body cells so that they don’t attack it and to also identify foreign cells and destroy it and they too are toxic cells that when activated destroy whatever they come across.
“ We now have some of them failing to recognize the body as self and attack it. The prevalence of lupus in Oyo state is around 0.5 percent, and it’s common in females far than the males .
“The symptoms of Lupus at the early stage are easily mistaken for another disease and the common diseases that people think they have are malaria and thyroid.
“The pattern is that they notice this week they treat malaria and two weeks after they treat thyroid and that they are treating malaria that isn’t going and that should cause a red flag, that you’re treating something and the drug you’re using is not working that means you’re not treating what you think you’re treating.
“ People make the error that it’s resistant malaria, and that’s why we always advise that the commonest sign of Lupus are fatigue, joint pain, low grade fever , some will have rashes .
“In fact the people that have rash are a bit fortunate because they notice that this is not just malaria and they come on time.
“ Lupus can simmer for months or even years before they are diagnosed. This awareness is to make people know that there’s a disease called lupus that starts off with simple symptoms but is very serious.
“Our best best at controlling Lupus is early diagnosis because if the lupus activity in the body continues, it can lead to irreversible organ damage, especially the kidney,” he said.
Dedeke said that Infact Lupus is one condition that can affect any organ system of the body, but the vital organs are crucial.
“ The vital organs are those that you can’t do without. This is why when lupus patients come late with irreversible change would need renal transplant.
“Lupus is not a death sentence. One of the challenges of treating Lupus is the side effect of some of the drugs; the rheumatologist is trained to monitor this and to prevent this as they treat.
“When you’re not treated by a specialist, the adverse effects are higher because there are standards that we use to monitor the care of our patients to reduce those adverse.
“On average , lupus patients need close to N100,000 monthly for medication, and that’s because of the fall in the dollar to naira.
“We also have the challenge of availability of these mediations but with further spread of awareness on Lupus we hope that pharmaceutical companies too will begin to bring them in because a lot of people don’t know about the drugs.
“When they see them, they say they’re cancer drugs we don’t need them, no we use them for lupus at lower safer dose to control patients with autoimmune diseases,” he said.
The consultant said that the Nigeria Society of Rheumatologist have implemented moves to include autoimmune medications into essential drug list.
Dedeke said that some have made it to the list and we are hoping that more will be added .
“We hope that with this kind of awareness, the government will know that there are citizens who have this condition, and this needs and expedite the inclusion in the essential drug list,”he said.
A lupus patient and beneficiary, Titilayo Adigun, 16- year old said it has been difficult for her since she got diagnosed with the disease.
“I was in JSS 3 when I was diagnosed with lupus disease. I can recall that after our examination, I was having a sharp pain, and I started bleeding, I thought it was stress but after series of test, I was diagnosed with lupus.
“Being a lupus patient, life has been stressful but after sometime, it has become more normal and the drugs has become normal.
“Before, I could take between 20 to 30 pills in a day, but now it has reduced to between five to 10 daily,” she said. (NAN) www.nannews.ng
