Angela Onwuzoo
Paediatricians have warned that injections administered by untrained individuals could cause permanent nerve damage in children, leaving some victims with lifelong difficulty in walking.
The child health experts stressed that only trained and qualified health workers should administer injections, noting that improper injection techniques—particularly in the buttocks—can severely injure major nerves.
According to them, injections should never be given indiscriminately in any part of the buttocks, warning that administering a shot in the wrong area could result in irreversible nerve damage.
Such injuries, they said, may lead to paralysis of the affected limb and make walking extremely difficult for the rest of the victim’s life.
Speaking in an interview with PUNCH Healthwise, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Dr Beatrice Ezenwa, explained that there are specific safe areas for administering injections in the buttocks in both adults and children.
The Consultant Neonatologist and Paediatrician at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, warned that untrained health workers and auxiliary nurses have no business administering injections due to the serious risks involved.
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.
“When you are to give injections, there are particular places you can give them.
“There are particular areas for giving an injection.”
Ezenwa noted that untrained health workers and auxiliary nurses who are not qualified to administer injections were the ones causing the problems.
“If somebody follows the guideline 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.
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the buttocks should not be routinely used as a vaccination site for infants and children; and, to avoid injury to the sciatic nerves.
“They are generally not used by adults. The central region of the buttocks should be avoided for all injections; the upper, outer quadrant should be used only for the largest volumes of injection”, CDC said.
Another paediatrician, Dr Olatunde Odusote, also corroborated Ezenwa’s statement, saying there are ways to give injections in the buttocks without causing harm to the recipient.
Odusote who is a Consultant Paediatrician and Head of the Division of Allergy, Dermatology and Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Paediatric and Child Health, Lagos State University Teaching, Ikeja, said the risk of damage is reduced when children are given an injection in the thigh.
The paediatrician said,” If you inject somebody on the nerve, it would cause irreversible damage.
“Nerves are not repairable once they are damaged. That is one way of causing the problem. So, that is an issue of quackery where somebody who is not trained to give injection gives injection and damages the nerve in that child especially if it is given in the buttocks.
“Usually, there is a way to give injections in the buttocks. When you want to give an injection in the buttocks, you have to divide it into four parts.
“It is the upper outer area that you will give the injection.”
Odusote, however, said, “But we also know from experience that although most nerves do not pass through that place, a few per cent of people, their nerves are in that area. That is why you find out that most vaccines in children now are given in the thigh. It is because of those findings.”
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.
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