Critical Discourse and Health Communication: Rethinking the Simplification of Nigerian Malaria Drug PILs

If the mind bugling data emanating from previous studies and international data sources on the death and ignorance and Malaria self-medication rate are to be focused on, there is a call for different drastic actions to be taken. One of such calls is the object of this study which is aimed at the simplification of Nigerian Malaria Drug Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) in order to make it accessible to at least educated Nigerians. Based on the above, the study simplified a paragraph each from two Nigerian Malaria Drug PILs, and 560 educated Nigerians of different levels were made to read both the original and simplified versions and then respond in different online platforms through Google platform to a few questions which test their understanding. The intention is to proffer a simplified model of Nigerian Malaria PILs that has a standard lexical readability scan and can at the same time be accessible to most educated Nigerians in terms of understanding. In the end, it is presented as part of the findings that the simplification of PILs would invariably increase the level of understanding among educated Nigerians as the simplified version was favoured against the original text of the PILs. Also, the study found out that the major challenge in such a simplification exercise is the replacement of technical terms which might change the technical meaning of the PILs.