Frontpage News (3249)
Infectious Diseases: Lagos Biosafety Lab Commences Operations
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In a bid to tackle future disease outbreaks in the country, the Lagos State biosafety laboratory has began operations, the state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, has said. Abayomi, in a statement issued on Monday, said the facility has the capacity to process, identify and store samples of infectious diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever and Coronavirus, among others.
Abayomi said that the laboratory was built by the state government with support from the Canadian government to ensure effective management of infectious diseases for improvement of public health.“With this facility, which is the highest and most functional biosafety, biobanking laboratory in West Africa,
‘Remove bottlenecks, release basic health care provision funds to state’
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For the Health sector in Nigeria to experience that big shift and the much needed revolution, it is expedient for the federal Government through the federal ministry of health to immediately remove all bottle necks and release Basic health Care provision Funds to States to boast their health system as contained in 2014 Health act.
While some states have had the funds released to their CBN account only 2 states in Nigeria have accessed the funds, One year after it was launched by President Buhari. Cross River State which is one of the 35 states held by the several bottle necks has appealed to President Buhari to help facilitate the release of the basic health care provision
The Federal Government on Tuesday said there was high-level inter-ministerial consultation towards setting up a multisectoral committee to scale up surveillance and vigilance to detect suspicious cases of coronavirus and ensure containing it at all points.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Gbebreyesus, will be meeting with the Chinese government and health experts over the outbreak of coronavirus on Tuesday.
Mr Gbebreyesus, on his Twitter handle @Dr_Tedros on Monday, said he was on his way to Beijing to meet with the government and health experts supporting the coronavirus response in the country. “My WHO colleagues and I would like to understand the latest development and strengthen our partnership in providing further protection against the outbreak,” he tweeted.
The rapid spread of a deadly virus across China caused growing global alarm yesterday, with Germany advising citizens to avoid the country, Mongolia closing its border and other nations racing to evacuate citizens trapped at the epicentre of the epidemic.
The coronavirus has now killed 81 people and infected more than 2,700 across China, with cases found in around a dozen countries as far away as France and the United States. In a sign of the mounting official concern, Premier Li Keqiang visited ground-zero to oversee containment efforts in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people where the disease emerged late last month.The government has sealed off Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, effectively trapping tens of millions of people,
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said Nigeria may lose two million children to pneumonia in the next decade if modalities are not put in place to curb the disease.
The UN body identified malnutrition, air pollution and lack of access to vaccines and antibiotics as the drivers of preventable deaths from pneumonia, which last year killed one child every three minutes in Nigeria. In a statement wednesday by its communications expert, Ms. Elaina Drakopoulos, the body said boosting efforts to fight pneumonia could avert over two million child deaths from pneumonia and other major diseases in Nigeria.
The federal government has said that 18 states are currently leprosy endemic, with few cases of the disease also being reported in others. It said Nigeria was among the few countries in the world still reporting above 1000 new cases annually, adding that in 2018 the country recorded 1095 new leprosy cases.
According to the 2015 National Leprosy Review, government said 18 states were still endemic in leprosy although there were pockets of endemicity in few other states of the federation. The Minister of state for Health, Senator Olorunnibe Mamora, who stated this at the ceremonies marking the 2020 World Leprosy Day, held in Abuja recently, said the federal government has made notable progress
Following the economic recession of 2016, the Nigerian government developed an Economic Recovery and Growth Plan for 2017-2020 with three broad strategic objectives: restoring growth; investing in human capital; and building a globally competitive economy that achieves agriculture and food security, industrialization, improved transport infrastructures and energy sufficiency.
Of these three objectives, one stands out: recognizing the importance of investing in human capital. This represents a major shift by the government, as it previously focused mostly on developing infrastructure—a move that came at the expense of other sectors, including healthcare.
The President of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, AbdlRauf Adeniji, has said the nurses in hospitals across the country are not enough.
Adeniji spoke during a programme organised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria and NANNM in conjunction with the Ministry of Health in Abuja to launch the Nursing Now campaign. He said Nigeria had less than 120,000 nurses for its 200 million population.
Nigerian pharmacists say they do not stock the Lassa fever drug of choice, Ribavirin, because it is not a medication for the treatment of “typical day-to-day ailments.” They said that only the Federal Government that can stock products like that.
The pharmacists and operators of pharmaceutical outlets disclosed this to PUNCH HealthWise as Nigeria continues to fight the haemorrhagic fever that has continued to spread throughout the nation. At least 12 states have recorded over 200 confirmed cases of Lassa fever outbreaks, with about 41 deaths, according to the Director General,
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Officials of the Ministry of Health’s Port Health Services at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, have put two passengers who arrived from China under surveillance as the nation continues to monitor the border posts against the deadly Coronavirus.
This happened as countries around the world, including the United States and Australia, said they would deny entry to all foreign visitors who had recently been in China, where the virus first emerged in December. The death toll from the new virus, which is officially called 2019-nCov, hit 259 on Saturday.
WHO: Garlic, Salt Water Can’t Prevent Coronavirus Infection
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that eating garlic and regularly rinsing nose with saline solution will not guard against coronavirus infection (2019-nCoV). Information obtained from WHO’s website on Monday dispelled various myths and rumours surrounding the 2019-nCoV that could potentially harm the public’s health.
WHO refuted some of the myths and rumours, noting that garlic was a healthy food that may have some antimicrobial properties. “However, there is no evidence from the current outbreak that eating garlic has protected people from 2019-nCoV,” it said.
The World Health Organization said Monday it was working around the clock with internet and social media giants to combat widespread misinformation surrounding the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of the dangers posed by "the spread of rumours and misinformation" as China saw a surge in deaths and infections from the highly contagious virus. "We have worked with Google to make sure people searching for information about coronavirus see WHO information at the top of their search results," Tedros said in opening remarks to the UN health agency's Executive Board meeting in Geneva.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stressed the need to urgently improve cancer services in low-and middle-income countries. The organisation made the call in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday to mark the World Cancer Day on February 4.
It warned that the world would see a 60 per cent increase in cancer cases over the next two decades, if current trends continue. The WHO said that the greatest increase, which was an estimated 81 per cent in new cases, would occur in low-and middle-income countries, where survival rates were currently lowest.
