Frontpage News (3249)
Why you should limit sugar content in your child’s foods, according to paediatrician
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A paediatrician, Dr. Nuhu Sule, has advised parents to limit their children’s consumption of sugary foods and beverages to avoid diabetes. Sule gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Kaduna on Wednesday. He said that sugary foods and beverages such as sodas, juice, iced teas and others contribute to excessive weight gain, which can lead to diabetes.
Sule, therefore, urged parents to provide healthy diet for their children. “Feed and encourage your child to eat low-fat, nutrient-rich foods such as fruit, vegetables, whole-grain cereals and breads, dairy products, and lean proteins.
Nigeria must produce vaccines locally, Senate President says
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President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has called for concerted efforts towards developing COVID-19 vaccine locally. He stated that vaccine production has become a necessity for almost every country, urging Nigeria to create an enabling environment and allocate resources for its production.
Lawan warned that failure to produce the vaccines in Nigeria, herd immunity may not be achieved in the next five years. The Senate President made the call at the presentation of a report by the Young Parliamentarians Forum of the 9th National Assembly and supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy in Abuja on Wednesday.
How we donate blood to our patients during emergencies -Physicians
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Physicians have decried the acute shortage of safe blood and blood products in the country, revealing that this had led to the deaths of many patients, especially now that insecurity has increased the demand for blood.
The physicians who spoke with our correspondent stated that as bad as the situation is, they sometimes donate blood, of their own volition, to their sick patients in their bid to keep such patients alive.
A former first Vice-President of the National Association of Resident Doctors, Dr. Julian Ojebo, says resident doctors decided to embark on an industrial strike on April 1 [today] following the deadlocked meetings with the Federal Government.
Ojebo, who is also a Specialist Registrar/Associate Fellow in Anaesthesia & Critical Care at the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Edo State, spoke on Morning Crossfire, a live radio programme on Nigeria Info, on Thursday [today].
No serious side effects reported from AstraZeneca vaccine so far, says Navy hospital
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The Nigerian Navy Reference Hospital, Ojo, Lagos, says it has not recorded any adverse effect from people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine in its facility. Head of Public Health Department at the NNRH, Dr. Munirat Afolayan, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Lagos.
The hospital began the vaccination programme on March 15. Afolayan said that the hospital initiates follow-up on patients immediately after they are vaccinated, in order to observe if there would be adverse reactions.
Water supply paralysed, admission reduced as UCH changes 64-year-old pipes
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The Public Relations Officer of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Mr. Toye Akinnola, says the tertiary institution’s water supply has been disrupted by the ongoing renovation work.
Akinnola said that some of the pipes carrying water into the hospital were laid since the hospital was established in 1953, and they had never been changed, adding that the pipes buried underground were being removed and replaced.
There’s no functional MRI in any govt-owned hospital in Abuja, says NARD executive
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A former first Vice-President of the National Association of Resident Doctors, Dr. Julian Ojebo, says none of the government-owned health institutions at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
According to him, the only MRI at the National Hospital, Abuja, is operated under a private partnership.
We’re only able to maintain emergency ward, Gombe CMD says as resident doctors’ strike takes toll
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Following the failure of Federal Government to meet the 13-point demand of doctors under the aegis of the National Association of Resident Doctors, Gombe State ARD branch, on Thursday, joined the indefinite industrial action called by it national body.
Speaking on the impact of the hours-old strike, Chief Medical Director at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, Dr. Abdullahi Yusuf, said consultants from across various fields had been drafted to the emergency unit to ensure smooth running of the department.
Why eating carrot, pap, cucumber can’t improve fertility in men with low sperm count
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Men with low sperm count who are indulging in self-medication by consuming carrot, pap and cucumber to boost their fertility are wasting time, health experts say. The experts note that for a man with low sperm count to be able to impregnate a woman, he must get proper medical examination and treatment from a specialist.
According to the World Health Organisation, estimates suggest that between 48 million couples and 186 million individuals live with infertility globally.
How we lost 17 doctors to COVID-19, according to UCH ARD president
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President of the University College Hospital Ibadan chapter of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors, Dr. Temitope Hussein, says the association lost 17 doctors to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hussein, who was justifying the association’s reasons for joining the nationwide strike of NARD, explained that families of the deceased doctors were yet to benefit from the Death-in-Service Insurance Scheme.
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No bedspace, Gbagada General Hospital tells emergency patients
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A visit to Gbagada General Hospital on Friday by PUNCH HealthWise shows that the secondary health facility is turning down emergency cases. One of such patients is 48-year-old Daniel Edet whose son said was coughing out blood and that he has swollen legs, among other life-threatening symptoms.
The hospital authorities said it was not turning back patients because of the ongoing strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors, but because of lack of bed space. Though the doctors at the hospital were not on strike, PUNCH HealthWise also observed that only skeletal services were on offer at the children’s ward, while the outpatient ward and reception that were usually filled to capacity were empty.
New self-isolation advice for people who have had COVID-19 vaccine
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People who have been vaccinated against coronavirus will still be expected to self-isolate if they show COVID-19 symptoms, new government advice says. The United Kingdom government’s updated ‘stay at home’ guidance says that even people who have received both of their vaccines, and therefore have maximum protection, would need to self-isolate.
The new guidance reads: “While COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to reduce the likelihood of severe illness for those who have received them, we do not yet know for certain by how much they reduce the likelihood of a vaccinated person spreading COVID-19 to others.
A new five-minute breast cancer treatment is being rolled out in England in a bid to dramatically reduce the amount of time patients spend in hospital, The Telegraph reports. More than 3,600 women a year are expected to benefit from the injection, which combines two drugs currently administered as separate intravenous infusions, says Yahoo News, quoting the medium.
Treatment with the prescription medicine, Phesgo, will be offered to breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy who have the HER2-positive form of the disease, about 15 percent of all breast cancer sufferers, it says.
Research claims some human genes come to life in brain after death
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A new study shows that in the hours after we die, certain cells in the human brain are still active. In a newly published study in the British weekly journal Nature, the University of Illinois Chicago researchers looked at gene expression in fresh brain tissue.
The study, titled, ‘Selective time-dependent changes in activity and cell-specific gene expression in human postmortem brain’ was published on March 23, 2021. To simulate what happens after death, researchers examined tissue samples taken from patients during routine brain surgeries. They found that some cells even increased their activity and grow to gargantuan proportions.
