According to Prof. Taiwo Lateef-Sheik, the Medical Director, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Kaduna recent statistics show, that about 80% of Nigerians with mental problems do not have access to treatment.

Discussing with a NAN representative during a mental health training in the state, he said that there is need for Nigeria to improve access to mental health centers.

 “Statistics shows that about 80 per cent of Nigerians who have issues that have to do with mental health do not actually receive treatment. “We felt that there is need for us to improve access to mental healthcare to Nigerians, hence the decision to develop this programme.”

Mrs Blessing Ameh, Health Educator, Kogi State Ministry of Health, said on Saturday that the state was free of polio for upward of six years without new cases. 

Ameh said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lokoja, attributing the success story to routine polio immunisation exercises. The health educator said that more efforts were still needed to protect the children from re-infection. According to her, the first round of the exercise this year will hold between Feb. 27 and March 1. 

“The National immunization plus days for this year is here again. It is a time whereby vaccinators go from house to house, school to school, market places, churches and mosques.

THE strike embarked upon by local government areas in Bayelsa State over the non-payment of salary arrears has hampered the medical outreach programme of the United Nations Children’s Fund in the state. 

The UNICEF team was in the state last for the rescheduled second round of the Maternal Newborn and Child Health Week. The second round of MNCHW was held nationwide from December 4 to December 10, 2015, but did not hold in Bayelsa State due to the governorship election that took place in the state on December 5, last year. 

The exercise monitored by Southern City News in some remote villages indicated that many government-owned health facilities were under lock and key, while a few others that were opened lacked adequate health workers to complement UNICEF team to administer services to the people.

Global vaccine experts and officials from all 26 African “meningitis belt” countries have convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to celebrate one of Africa’s biggest public health achievements—the introduction of a vaccine, MenAfriVac®, designed, developed, and produced for use in Africa, that in five years of use has nearly eliminated serogroup A meningococcal disease from meningitis belt countries and is now being integrated into routine national immunization programs.

 Cases of the deadly infectious disease went from over 250,000 during an outbreak in 1996 to just 80 confirmed cases in 2015 among countries that had not yet conducted mass immunization campaigns and among those unvaccinated, scientists at the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) Closure Conference reported.