About 24,483 units of blood were collected and screened from voluntary blood donors through the 17 centres of the National Blood Transfusion Service network in 2019, the Federal Government said on Sunday.

The government also stated that in same year, 19,676 units of blood were issued to various hospitals nationwide for transfusion. The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said this on Sunday in a statement in Abuja in commemoration of the 2020 World Blood Donor Day with the theme, ‘Safe Blood Saves Lives.’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described the initial clinical trial results from the United Kingdom (UK) that shows dexamethasone can be lifesaving for treating patients critically ill with COVID-19 as a welcome development.

It however said an in-depth analysis of the intervention will be carried out before issuing clinical guidance on how and when the drug should be used.
The WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made this known on Wednesday in a statement.

Despite protest against his choice by the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, the Federal Government has inaugurated Mr A. T. Mora as the chairman, Governing Council of the Pharmacist Council of Nigeria.

At the event, the government charged pharmacists to think of new ways of doing things as “a situation where the focus is on importation of finished products and compounding of raw materials is clearly not acceptable.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO), Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, says the number of coronavirus cases in Africa is now over 256,000. The UN health agency gave the update on its official twitter account @WHOAFRO on Wednesday.

The agency said: “There are over 256,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases on the African continent – with more than 117,800 recoveries and 6,800 deaths.’’ Meanwhile,  Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organisation (WHO),  said the world had now recorded more than eight million cases of COVID-19.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), on Wednesday, announced that the country has recorded 587 new cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19), bringing the total number of infections in Nigeria to 17,735.

The NCDC disclosed this on its verified Twitter handle on Wednesday night. The centre also said that the number of fatalities has risen to 469 after recording 14 new deaths, while 5,967 people have been discharged from the isolation centres after full recovery.

Kaduna State government says it has secured a mobile laboratory for COVID-19 test and other infectious diseases in the state. Gov. Nasiru El-Rufai, who made this known on Thursday in Kaduna, said the laboratory, earlier donated by USAID for tuberculosis test, was deployed to the communities for COVID-19 test and the effort had yielded result.

He said the mobile laboratory tagged: Wellness On Wheels (WOW), which had been in the state for a while, was to increase the rate of testing in the communities.

AS attention has shifted from other health-related ailments to Covid19 pandemic, a Non-governmental Organization (NGO), Child Education and Community Development Initiative (CECDI) said in Lafia that it has identified and empowered more than 20,005 vulnerable HIV/AIDS households in Nasarawa State.

Programme Manager of the organization, Jonah Aboki who stated this while interacting with newsmen on Monday stressed that the organization was currently wading into the immediate needs of persons around the identified households in the state.

The World Health Organization called on Monday for a rapid increase in production of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid which has been shown to reduce deaths in critically ill coronavirus patients. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said demand had already surged after a British trial of the drug was publicized but he was confident production could be ramped up.

Some 2,000 patients were given the drug by researchers led by a team from Oxford University, and it reduced deaths by 35 percent among the most sickly, according to findings published last week.

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) will collaborate with indigenous scientists in the development of drugs or vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country.

Tribune Online reports that Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC Director-General, said the agency’s interventions would allow for documentation of such initiatives for global recording as potential vaccines or drugs that is in process or safety testing.