By Sola Ogundipe
If the person sitting next to you collapsed right now – in your office, church, or home – and it is a cardiac arrest, they are unlikely to survive. Not because medical help doesn’t exist, but because you will waste the next five minutes not knowing what to do.
The gap between life and death is rarely the distance to the hospital; it is the distance between immediate action and paralyzed ignorance. But first – would you even recognise it as a cardiac emergency? When a person’s heart stops, they do not clutch their chest dramatically like in the films.
They collapse. They go still. They may gasp once or twice and then nothing. Most bystanders assume the person has fainted and will wake up. They will not – not without help. That misreading costs precious minutes. Good intentions do not jumpstart a stopped heart. This collective helplessness is a silent epidemic killing Nigerians daily.
According to the Nigerian Cardiac Society, 89 percent of sudden cardiac deaths in Nigeria occur outside the hospital – and fewer than 40 percent are even witnessed. This is no longer just an old person’s crisis. Nigerian cardiologists are reporting hypertension in people as young as 30. Studies show nearly one in five young Nigerian adults aged 18 to 40 is already hypertensive – most without knowing it.
