Dr Nicholas Baamlong had a narrow miss with Lassa fever virus, a disease that’s killed many and is still killing. His patient was bleeding from orifices, one sure sign of Lassa.

“When we suspected that, immediately we called public health people,” says Baamlong, who heads a committee on control and prevention of infectious diseases as University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada. “Before then we had to isolate the patient and do barrier nursing.” That’s caring for a patient but maintaining protective barriers to avoid infection.

Medical doctors under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) are set for showdown talk on resident doctors’ strike with the Federal Government.

The Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) and the 36 states commissioners of health are meeting doctors as the 59th National Council on Health (NCH) began in Umuahia, Abia State, yesterday. The NCH is the highest decision making body in the health sector.

The Medicines Patent Pool today announced that it has signed a licence with Johns Hopkins University to facilitate the clinical development of tuberculosis (TB) drug candidate sutezolid. The antibiotic sutezolid has long been considered a promising investigational treatment that, if further developed in combination with other drugs, could be used to more effectively treat both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB in patients.

The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), has directed its members to stop attending to health needs of commissioners , special advisers and other categories of political appointees in Kogi State until further notice.

Dr Magnus Ogaraku, the Chairman of the state chapter of the NMA, announced this at a news conference in Lokoja on Thursday.

Partnership For Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFaH) has called on the federal government to as a matter of urgency reconsider its proposed 4.17 per cent budgetary allocation to health sector. PACFaH, a health advocacy project is calling on the government to  allocate a minimum of 10 percent of its annual budget to health,  noting that the government had not kept its part of the 2001 Abuja  declaration which stipulates that a benchmark of 15per cent should be allocated to this all important sector.

The Rivers State Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday decided to settle out -of -court their differences.

The MHWUN internal crisis, which had torn the association into two factions, had persisted after some aggrieved Primary Healthcare workers ignored peace moves and went ahead to initiate litigation at the Industrial Court against the NLC president, Comrade Ayuba Wabba charging him not to re-contest for the NLC’s top position.