The Lagos State Government says it has abolished the recruitment of contract doctors and health workers in the state. Speaking during a media parley held at the Conference Room of the Ministry, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, revealed that the move was part of Governor Ambode’s effort to restore peace and abolish the incessant strike actions in the sector. He said the administration is committed to ensuring improved and quality healthcare for Lagos residents. As part of this effort, the governor has already procured power generating sets, ambulances and portable x-ray machines for distribution to public hospitals, among other laudable achievements, he said.

Aside this, the Commissioner said that the State would train and retrain its health workforce to empower them to deliver qualitative service to the teeming populace. He further said that this administration would focus on addressing the intra-professional rivalries among health workers, as well as other issues in order to achieve effective and qualitative service delivery to the general populace. According to him, it will no longer be business as usual as Ministry will no longer tolerate any act of indiscipline and is ready to mete out sanctions to erring workers and show impenitent ones among them the way out.

A major breakthrough has been recorded in the fight against malaria. For the first time ever, scientists have been able to successfully render a female mosquito infertile following the successful insertion of an infertility gene into  Anopheles gambiae, the main vector for malaria. In their work published in Nature , the researchers described CRISPR-Cas9endonuclease constructs that function as gene drive systems in Anopheles gambiae. They identified three genes (AGAP005958, AGAP011377 and AGAP007280) that confer a recessive female-sterility phenotype upon disruption, and inserted into each locus CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive constructs designed to target and edit each gene.

“For each targeted locus we observed a strong gene drive at the molecular level, with transmission rates to progeny of 91.4 to 99.6%. Population modeling and cage experiments indicate that a CRISPR-Cas9 construct targeting one of these loci, AGAP007280, meets the minimum requirement for a gene drive targeting female reproduction in an insect population,” the researchers said. They believe that the findings could expedite the development of gene drives to suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support malaria transmission.

Miss Kesandu Nwokolo, a young Nigerian, has developed a mobile phone application to help reduce infant and maternal mortality in Africa. In a statement obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Lagos, the innovative healthcare app would revolutionise the health sector in Nigeria and Africa. It said that the innovative healthcare application developed by Nwokolo and her team is called ”CradleCount”. It noted that about six out of 10 women have their babies at home, where the delivery was not supervised by a skilled birth attendant. The statement said that errors in estimating the expected date of delivery could lead to the baby being delivered supposedly unexpected.

“This is the problem faced by pregnant women in Nigeria and Africa, if this is not addressed, there will be increased pregnancy related complications resulting in more maternal and infant mortality. “This is where technology and innovation come in. “Seeing these shocking statistics and challenges faced by pregnant women led to the development of the mobile phone application, CradleCount. “CradleCount helps pregnant women and also health practitioners to calculate accurately the expected date of delivery using the last menstrual period. “The app informs pregnant women how many days to the delivery of the baby and has alerts that remind pregnant mothers to register and follow up with their antenatal care.

Cases of Lassa Fever have been recorded at the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital, DASH, Lafia, Nasarawa State capital, with two of the patients who have been confirmed by the hospital authorities already on admission at the hospital. The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Daniel Iya, confirmed the development to newsmen at a press briefing yesterday. He added that the victims, an 18-year old student and a 34-year old man were brought to the specialist hospital on December 21 and 24 last year, respectively.

He explained that the patients were still alive and receiving treatment, noting that all their contacts had been identified and placed on surveillance. He stated further that the state government had commenced public enlightenment campaigns to inform and educate the public on the dangers of the disease, adding that plans were on top gear to sensitise health workers at the primary and secondary levels in the state to improve on their index of suspicion.

A Medical Researcher, Dr Bamidele Iwalokun, has advised parents to ensure that they handled cases of Tuberculosis (TB) among children without any delay. Iwalokun of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in Yaba, Lagos, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday. He said that TB was an all-year- round-disease, occurring more during the rainy season. He identified cough as one of the symptoms of the TB and others diseases affecting the human wind pipes.

The researcher then urged parents to always pay attention to their children and ensured that they visited their physicians regularly and when they suspected any unpleasant health situation. He said, They should also ensure that their children sleep in well -ventilated rooms because overcrowding was also a risk factor for TB in children. “Parents should also make sure that their children get BCG

The Obama administration on Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Texas abortion law that has shuttered nearly half the clinics in the state, saying the Republican-backed regulations would harm rather than protect women's health. Intervening in the Supreme Court's first abortion case since 2007, the administration said the new Texas rules for clinics and physicians who perform abortions are far more restrictive than other regulations upheld by the justices over the years. If allowed to take full effect, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilliwrote, the law would close many more of the state's clinics and force hundreds of thousands of Texas women to travel great distances if they seek to terminate pregnancies.

"Those requirements are unnecessary to protect - indeed, would harm - women's health, and they would result in closure of three quarters of the abortion clinics in the state," Verrilli wrote. The administration's "friend of the court" brief siding with the clinics challenging the law comes in one of the most politically charged disputes this presidential election year. The case does not test the fundamental right to abortion established by the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but could impact women's access to abortion services nationwide. Depending on how the justices rule, they could encourage, or dissuade, other states to impose regulations.

The British government said it was seeking to hold talks with doctors in its state-funded health service in a last-ditch bid to avert a series of mass walkouts, potentially the first such strikes for four decades. Junior doctors, or doctors in training who represent just over half of all doctors in the National Health Service, said on Monday they would stage a 24-hour stoppage next week, followed by two further 48-hour strikes. It will affect non-emergency care and lead to the cancellations of many operations. Doctors' strikes are rare in Britain. The last time junior doctors took industrial action was in 1975 over non-payment for work done outside the standard 40-hour working week. A new contract was agreed the next year.

Planned walkouts before Christmas were suspended to allow for further talks in the dispute which centres on pay and conditions, but on Monday the doctors' union, the British Medical Association (BMA), said these discussions had failed to make progress. "In order for them (the strikes) to be called off, the government would have to recognise the deeply held concerns of junior doctors and be able to go rather further than it has been able to push itself over Christmas," Mark Porter, the BMA chairman told BBC Radio.

Professor Isaac Adewole, Minister of Health has confirmed the spread of Lassa Fever across 10 states in the past 6 weeks and also stated that 40 people have been confirmed dead. The states affected include Bauchi, Nasarawa, Niger, Taraba, Kano, Rivers, Edo, Plateau, Gombe and Oyo state. “In the last six weeks Nigeria has been experiencing Lassa fever outbreak which so far has affected 10 states in the country, " Adewole said.

“The states affected include Bauchi, Nasarawa, Niger, Taraba, Kano, Rivers, Edo, Plateau, Gombe and Oyo state. “The total number so far reported is 86 and 40 deaths with the mortality rate of 45%. “Our laboratories have confirmed 22 cases so far, indicative of a new round trip of Lassa fever outbreak,” he said.nThe minister has since listed a number of safety measures taken by the Federal Ministry of Health to manage further spread and also reduce mortality among those affected.

Source: Pulse Nigeria

As part of its effort to ensure that tenets of good pharmacy practice is strictly adhered to, the Pharmacy Society of Nigeria (PSN) has warned pharmacists in all cadres to be ready to comply with payment of their practicing fees in view of section (14(1) of the PCN Act or face conviction. In a statement made available to Newswatch Times, the National President of PSN, Pharm. Ahmed Ibrahim Yakasai, stressed that section (14(1) of the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) Act stipulates that conviction is penalty for payment defaulters.

Section (14(1) of the PCN Act states: “No registered person shall practice as a pharmacist in any year unless he has paid to the Council in respect of that year, the appropriate practicing fee which shall be due every January. “It is important to inform members of the PSN that after due consultation with the PSN NEC, the PCN has taken a bold decision to invoke the provisions of section 14(6) of the PCN Act which posits that “any pharmacist who in respect of any year without paying the practicing fee practices as such is guilty of an offence and is liable on conviction,” Yakasai said.