Due to the fact that the disease is accompanied by symptoms of headache and fever, citizens affected by “eye pain”, residents of Mazozo, fear that they are infected with hemorrhagic conjunctivitis and are crying out for help to get rid of it.
The lack of information in some inland communities regarding the resources of conventional medicine to deal with the outbreak of conjunctivitis, accompanied by the symptoms mentioned above, which is ravaging the country, is leading residents to self-medicate using leaves. This occurs despite being unable to distinguish hemorrhagic conjunctivitis from normal or common conjunctivitis. Inês Paulino José, 25 years old, resident of the Augusto neighborhood, in the town of Mazozo, in the municipality of Icolo e Bengo, in Luanda, says that the lack of conditions and medication to treat illnesses, forces residents to seek treatment outside the neighborhood.
However, when this alternative becomes complicated due to the thousand kwanzas charged by taxi drivers who travel the route Mazozo (Icolo and Bengo) – Kilometer 30 (Viana) and vice versa, the population then resorts to home healing practices. In fact, Neusa, as Inês Paulino is affectionately treated, who is infected by the disease, revealed that, until the date of this report, on the morning of Monday the 11th, she did not go to the medical center, having sought help, solely and simply- mind, with water boiled from the mallow leaf.
“Look, this leaf is what relieves us from the pain of almost everything here, it cures us from urinary infections, it is used for postpartum baths, as a sweater and a calmer for fevers, and now we are using it to cure this pain – from view”, said Neusa, highlighting that, in Mazozo, mallow is the residents’ choice. Another concern for the patient has to do with the fact that the disease is contagious and contact between members of the same family is inevitable. “This is contagious, the first person who had it in the house was my baby, then it spread to the other two. It’s only now that I’m affected too. But right now, I’m boiling these mallow leaves to wash my face with the same water. Here in Mazozo, we don’t despise each other, so let’s all get this eye-sore,” she emphasized.
