A comprehensive cancer care centre is where experts carry out research, clinical trials, study the patterns, causes, and control of cancer in groups of people and provide services directly to cancer patients and also give cancer information to health care professionals and the public.

Unfortunately, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Care Organisation Public Enlightenment (COPE), Mrs. Ebunola Anozie, said Nigeria is yet to have one. She noted that Nigeria is not a poor country, and urged the government to do more in cancer care and management in the country.

People with less than average means who are unable to have quality sleep as a result of working long for long hours daily and residing in noisy, non-conducive neighbourhoods are more prone to develop heart disease than the rich, Swiss scientists have claimed in the new research.

When the researchers, at the University Centre of General Medicine and Public Health in Lausanne, Switzerland, compared the history of coronary heart disease with annual salaries of participants in the study, they found that there was a direct relationship between their rate of heart disease and their income.

Mrs. Helen Onwudiwe, the Head of Cervical Cancer Unit,   Chukwuemeka  Odumegwu Ojukwu Teaching Hospital, on Tuesday urged women of adult age to develop the habit of going for cervical cancer screening regularly. She made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Awka.

According to her, about 20 per cent of women who go for cervical cancer screening in Anambra do so on referral level, as no one comes forward voluntarily for the screening, which is not good enough. She said that cervical cancer could be prevented through regular screening to identify abnormal changes in the cells of the cervix at an early stage.

As part of efforts to revitalise the growth of SMEs in the health sector, Polaris Bank has announced the introduction of a new Polaris Health Sector Loan bundle to support the growth of the sector. The product was designed to meet the funding needs of Healthcare service providers in Nigeria.

Over the years, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nigeria has been described as one of the largest in the world and one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa.

Many people living with HIV in Nigeria are unaware of their status while a large percentage of those diagnosed are not on Antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment. Worse still, the country continues to fall short of providing the recommended number of HIV testing and counseling sites.

The President of Hospital Equipment and Medical Devices Dealers Association (HEMDDAN), Dr. Ifeanyi Nwankwo, has given reasons for forming the associaiton.

Speaking ahead of its inauguration and investiture which will take place in Lagos at the weekend, he said that hospital equipment and medical devices are very sensitive equipment that should not be left unregulated. He said that the objective is to ensure that members stick to standard in the supply of hospital equipment and other medical devices.

The Ondo State government has scaled up the capacity of a group of health professionals called medicine handlers at the State Contributory Health Scheme to train health officers drawn from the 18 local government areas of the state.

At the Train the Trainers programme, which took place in Akure, the state capital, at the capital, the Commissioner for Health, Dr Wahab Adegbenro, expressed his expectation that with the coming of the Contributory Health Scheme aimed at achieving universal health coverage, there would be an upsurge in health facilities.

A Consultant Radiation Oncologist, Dr. Oludare Adeyemi has uncovered a new method of treatment of breast cancer away from the conventional cutting of the breast.

While advising women to go for regular screening for early detection of the disease,
Adeyemi who disclosed this in Benin City recently, reiterated that the breakthrough does not require mastectomy; a surgical operation that required the cutting of the breast.

Poorly controlled asthma during pregnancy puts mothers and their babies at increased risk for serious complications, a new study finds. Researchers analyzed more than 100,000 pregnancies in more than 58,000 women with asthma in Canada.

Compared to those whose asthma was well-controlled, women who had severe asthma symptoms during pregnancy were 17% more likely to have high blood pressure and about 30% more likely to develop a serious condition called preeclampsia.

“Imagine having a disease that we knew killed almost a million people a year, a quarter of them before the age of thirty, and yet we knew nothing about why some individuals are more vulnerable to this disease,” said Dr Anne-Laura van Harmelen, co-first author from the University of Cambridge.

“This is where we are with suicide. We know very little about what’s happening in the brain, why there are sex differences, and what makes young people especially vulnerable to suicide.”