Borno State Governor, Babagana Umara Zulum, in the early hours of Tuesday, paid an unannounced visit to the State Specialist and Umaru Shehu Hospitals, both in Maiduguri.

The governor was disappointed as there was not a single doctor on duty at the time he visited. Also, only a few nurses were on duty. According to  DAILY TRUST, “The governor called some of the doctors on phone at the Hospital but none of them answered the call.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, in collaboration with the European Union, has renovated and upgraded seven Primary Health Centres in Adamawa. Dr. Halima Abdu of UNICEF Bauchi Field Office made this known on Monday in Yola at the handing over of one of the health centers in Doubeli Ward of Yola North Local Government Area.

Abdu said that UNICEF had been partnering with the Adamawa government in key sectors of health, nutrition, water, sanitation, hygiene, basic education and child protection.

The Federal Ministry of Health has disbursed N12.7 billion of the N55 billion one per cent consolidated revenue appropriated in the 2018 budget for Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF).

The fund is a fundamental funding provision under the National Health Act but was only appropriated in 2018 for the first time since the Act was signed in 2014. The Coordinator, Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), Aminu Magashi, disclosed this during a technical session with health journalists in Abuja on Thursday.

The Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, has suspended a medical director and four resident doctors, who were not at their duty posts on the night he paid surprise visits to some public hospitals in Maiduguri.

The governor had, on Monday night, paid unscheduled visits to some of the state-owned general hospitals to find out how the health facilities are being run.

The Kwara State Government says it has embarked on vaccination against polio in seven local government areas of the state in response to an outbreak. The Executive Secretary, Kwara State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Abimbola Folorunso, made this known on Thursday in Ilorin.

According to Mrs Folorunso, the local government areas are Asa, Baruten, Ifelodun, Ilorin South, Ilorin West, Ilorin East, and Moro. She explained that the exercise was in view of “circulating derived poliovirus’’ being transmitted in the state.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has announced plans to elevate its Medicine Information Centre (MIC) to a National Drug & Poison Information, Emergency Response and Research Centre, which will be a coordinating centre to responses on suicide attempts, rehabilitation of drug addicts and people injured by poisons.

Speaking with newsmen at a media parley organised to unveil this plan on Monday in Lagos, Dr John Nwaiwu, chairman, PSN Project Committee stated that the centre, which will be located at the Pharmacy Towers to be built in the Central Business District, Victoria Island will also offer hope of survival to victims exposed to the untoward effects of drugs, substance of abuse and poisons through counselling and referral when necessary.

Nigeria has graduated from a transit country for illicit addiction drugs to a manufacturing hub, and addressing this new challenge and its attendant growing security impacts on the nation will require more proactive measures and better collaboration of all relevant government agencies, Pharm. N.A.E. Mohammed, registrar, Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN), has said.

Speaking recently in Abuja to participants of the Executive Intelligence Management Course (EIMC) 12 of the Institute of Security Studies, Abuja, Mohammed disclosed that the recent discovery of methamphetamine laboratories in some parts of Nigeria is a proof that the country has indeed become a center for the production of addictive drugs.

Given the avalanche of controversies that marked the tenure of the immediate past executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, it comes as no surprise that the recent appointment of Prof. Mohammed Nasir Sambo as the new executive secretary of the Scheme has once again raised the hopes of many Nigerians that the programme may get a fresh start to finally begin to deliver on its mandate.

It is, however, essential to state that turning around the fortunes of the NHIS will require much more than hopes; it will require a lot of work, vision and strategy, driven by an uncommon passion to deliver results. In fact, the success of the new executive secretary will depend more on how he addresses the fundamental challenges that have bogged down the agency since inception, as these have, in no small way, contributed to the high turnover of executive secretaries for the Scheme.

Governor Muhammadu Yahaya of Gombe State has described the condition of the state’s health sector as deplorable. He promised to do all within his powers to uplift the sector.

Yahaya said this while inaugurating a nine-man task force on the health sector on Tuesday in Gombe, the state capital. Yahaya recalled that his visit to some health facilities shortly after his swearing-in showed that the health sector had been neglected by the past administration.

To effectively and efficiently treat cancer patients nationwide, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo) have donated an additional Linear Accelerator (LINAC) radiotherapy machine to the National Hospital, Abuja.

Speaking at an event to commission the machine, Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, noted that the commissioning of the ultramodern cancer treatment machine gives the country hope because cancer patients now have a place to find succor.