The Nigerian Air Force (NAF), on Thursday said it had commenced another round of medical outreach programme in Borno. The Director, Public Relations and Information, NAF Headquarters, Air Commodore Olatokunbo Adesanya, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja on Thursday.

According to Adesanya, the new round of medical outreach programme was primarily aimed at enhancing available NAF medical facilities and personnel at the Medical Centre of NAF 105 Composite Group (CG), in Maiduguri.

The incidence of measles among children under the age of five increased more than two-fold in the northern part of Nigeria between 2014 and 2016, a survey has revealed. This was revealed just as UNICEF said the country has the highest number of children in the world not immunised with the first dose of measles vaccine.

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said a surveillance data shows that measles incidence among children under five years increased in the northern part of Nigeria from 190 million in 2014 to 527 million in 2016.

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, has appealed to the leadership of the Joint Health Staff Union, JOHESU, not to embark on its planned industrial action. The appeal came on Wednesday, a few hours after the association threatened to begin a nationwide strike on September 20.

JOHESU said the planned action was due to government’s failure to meet its demands.

The Association of Resident Doctors, ARD, at the Federal Medical Centre, Owo, Ondo State, has raised the alarm over an alleged diversion of N280.8 million credited to the hospital by the Federal Ministry of Finance for the payment of salary arrears

The arrears reportedly covered the ‘Skipping’ entitlements for 2016, a term used for entitled double promotions for resident doctors.

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, has expressed optimism that the striking workers under the National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, across the country would soon resume duty. The doctors had embarked on a nationwide strike on September 4, crippling all health services at secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities across the nation.

Mr. Adewole told PREMIUM TIMES that the government “has done what the resident doctors under the federal government asked for” and ‘this was to pay all outstanding salary arrears of the resident doctors to the bank accounts of institutions affected.’

Following the strike action embarked upon by resident doctors to compel the government to meet their demands, many patients are currently being moved from government owned hospitals in Lagos to the private hospitals to get

better treatment speaking with a staff of Lagos State University Hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity said nurses are merely going to work but could not  do anything without the availability of doctors. “We are just going to work just to make ourselves available but nurses are

Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar has disclosed that the state Drug Revolving Scheme has recorded a turnover of over N80 million in less than two years. 

The Federal Government has directed all federal medical facilities and primary health care centres to treat cases of meningitis free of charge. Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole disclosed this in a statement saying that the outbreak of cerebral spinal meningitis since November 2016 had killed 328 persons.

He said Nigerians especially residents of Katsina, Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto, Niger, Zamfara and Jigawa states should seek early attention, when discomforted with symptoms of Cerebrospinal Meningitis (CSM). He also urged them to avoid clogging together in unventilated and over-crowded rooms.