Frontpage News (3254)
President Muhammadu Buhari has named four heads for major health institutions across Nigeria. The president appointed Ajayi Adekunle as Chief Medical Director, Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti, Ekiti State.
He appointed Henry Ugboma as Chief Medical Director, University of Port-Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State.
A survey conducted by Mamaye Evidence for Action (E4A) has shown that only eight out of the 27 Secondary Health Facilities in Bauchi State have functional blood banks. E4A is a UK-funded project with focus on addressing maternal and child health challenges.
The threat of another deadly epidemic of Cerebro Spinal meningitis (CSM) persists in Nigeria as the country enters into another high-risk season (dry season- from November to May) for meningitis, measles and other infections.
Concerns persist over the continuing failure of the authorities to take obvious measures to check the recurrent disease.Last year’s outbreak became an epidemic, despite the country’s past experiences with the disease and early warnings by local and international health agencies of its imminence.
Three health workers at Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, have died from Lassa fever and another one person is ill after two people were confirmed positive for the virus.
Among the dead were two medical doctors and nurse while the suspected carrier survived and has been discharged. Ebonyi health commissioner Dr. Dennis Umezurike said the fresh outbreak occurred on Sunday.
Minister of Health Isaac Adewole, has alerted the Nigerian public of cases of food poison with listeriosis in South Africa. Listeriosis is food poisoning from eating food items such as meats, dairy products, fruits and vegetables contaminated with the bacteria listeria monocystogene.
Health minister warns Nigerians of meningitis, explains inability to vaccinate all citizens
Nigerians have been warned to be on alert and take preventive measures against Cerebrospinal Meningitis, CSM, as this is the season of the deadly disease. The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, who gave the warning, said the federal government cannot afford to vaccinate every single citizen against the disease at the moment.
According to Mr. Adewole, CSM, a seasonal disorder, is easy to diagnose but the protective vaccine is very expensive.
The National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has confirmed that Ebonyi State has notified it of a cluster breakout of Lassa fever in the state. The health agency in a press statement on its website on Monday said it was notified of four cases of Lassa fever among health care workers in the state on Sunday.
“Three of the four cases have subsequently passed away,” it stated
Thousands of babies are still dying daily from preventable causes – and pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition are killing millions of under-fives in the developing world.
Progress is being made on young children’s health, with the under-five mortality rate almost cut in half since 2000. But sadly millions will still never reach their fifth birthday. In fact, children in sub-Saharan Africa are 10 times more likely to die before the age of five than children in high-income countries.
THE constant training and retraining of medical practitioners has been identified as a strategy that would effectively curb medical tourism the State and in Nigeria at large. Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode It is on record that the nation loses an estimated one billion dollars annually to medical tourism mostly as a result of inadequate investment in the nation’s healthcare system.
The failure of the health system is often attributed to the penchant for medical tourism embarked by prominent Nigerians, a major contributor to the current spate of brain drain, loss of confidence in the sector along with patient drain and capital flight abroad. No less than 37, 000 Nigerian doctors are in the diaspora, with about 30, 000 in the United Kingdom.
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Afe Babalola University Teaching Hospital, Ado Ekiti(ABUTH), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with one of the most prominent medical institutions, the Aster Group of Hospitals in Dubai, United Arab Emirates as part of efforts to end spending of billions of naira by Nigerians seeking medical treatments abroad.
The partnership, according to ABUAD's founder, Chief Afe Babalola(SAN) , will make the Afe Babalola Teaching Hospital and the Dubai based medical institution to partner in the areas of clinical, technical and administration to lend support for the new Teaching Hospital. The memorandum was signed in the hospital on Tuesday, where it was agreed that Aster will offer short and long terms as well as permanent partnership for smooth take off of ABUATH.
Speaking afte the memorandum was signed, Dr. Navin Pascal , who spoke on behalf of the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Aster, said the hospitals has subsidiaries in nine countries and had been receiving over patients from over 90 countries across the world.He said it was sad that Nigeria loses over 35,000 doctors to advanced countries due to poor remunerations, saying the trend has been affecting healthcare service in the country.
administration.What we will do is to train the doctors here so that ABUAD can be self sufficient in having experts that can perform critical operations that can make the rich and middle class Nigerians to see the hospitals
as a better alternative.
health sector”, he said.Babalola revealed that a delegation will leave for Dubai in January 26 to perfect the MoU agreement .
In this partnership, ABUTH and Aster are equal partners. Though, we agreed for long and short terms, but the memorandum may be forever
depending on its workability.
Nigerians can't afford to be spending so much on medical tourism and I have faith that this partnership will make the country to be a leading nation in healthcare services.He said the breaking down of medical equipment in critical areas like dialysis , oncology and cardiology was becoming embarrassing,urging Aster to bring in experts in biomedical engineering to train the experts in ABUATH to prevent such from occurring in the hospital.
Source: Guardian
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Enugu State government has urged residents to be vigilant, following the fresh outbreak of Lassa fever in Ebonyi State.The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Fintan Ekochin, made the appeal yesterday.He said although the disease has not been reported in the state, there were concerns about those who travel to and from Ebonyi.
The crisis in Jos University Teaching Hospital, deepened on Wednesday when about 400 Resident Doctors protest on the streets with a mock coffin. As early as 8:30am, the aggrieved doctors had laid siege to the complex of JUTH complaining about the dictatorial tendencies of its Chief Medical Director, Prof. Edmund Banwat.
NAFDAC to Commence Nationwide Campaign Against Fake, Substandard Drugs
The National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC says it will in March this year commence a nationwide campaign against falsified and substandard drugs in Nigeria.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised alarm over imminent ‘deadly’ epidemic of Yellow fever in Nigeria. The WHO, last month, warned that yellow fever cases throughout Nigeria are escalating concerns about the risk of large, costly, and difficult-to-control outbreaks in urban areas requiring huge supplies of life-saving vaccines and increasing the potential for large-scale national and even worldwide spread.
Fears that the situation in globally connected Nigeria could soon mirror the massive 2016 urban outbreak in Angola, during which cases were exported to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and as far as China, are raising urgent calls for quick containment.
