Frontpage News (3254)
To privatise or not to privatise, that is the question now in Nigeria’s health sector
The furor over the proposed policy of Private Public Partnership (PPP) in the health sector cannot be wished away because of its likely implications for access to healthcare by majority of poor Nigerians. The Yayale Committee Report on disharmony in the health sector gave a hint of government’s preparedness to adopt the policy. The report calls for the privatisation of federal hospitals in the country through the system of PPP. In retrospection, we recollect that the debate over the suitability of the idea started since 2006 when the National Council on Health (NCH) purportedly looked into the idea and approved it initially under former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration and last year under the President Jonathan’s administration.Countdown to declare Sierra Leone Ebola free begins as last patient is discharged
A 42 day countdown to declare Sierra Leone Ebola free started on Tuesday, 25th August 2015 following the discharge of the last patient, Adama Sankoh from hospital. The 42 days is double the incubation period of 21 days. The incubation period is the time between contraction and manifestation of symptoms in an infected person. The discharged patient contracted the virus after her son died from the disease late last month. She was presented with a certificate by President Ernest Bai Koroma following her discharge.
“The Ebola fight is not yet over – go and tell members of your community that” the president said. “Go back to your community and continue to live life as you used to.” The Independent reported that Sankoh, whose 23-year-old son contracted Ebola in the capital, Freetown, before traveling to his home village, thanked everyone who provided her care during her illness. She also vowed to be the last person infected in Sierra Leone with the virus. “Although my child died of Ebola I am very happy that I have survived today,” she said upon leaving the Ebola treatment centre in Mateneh village on the outskirts of Makeni, the president’s hometown.
The federal medical center just recently returned to work after medical services were suspended for over three months. The cause was the faceoff between members of the house unions and the chief medical director. A similar situation appears to be unfolding at the Federal Medical Center, Owo, Ondo state as members of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) are demanding that the Federal Ministry of Health recalls Dr. Adediran Kolajo, the administrator of the hospital who is acting on interim basis. They are making the demand on the grounds of his victimization of her members.
The association also wants the Ministry to investigate projects executed before and during the tenure of Dr. Kolajo. Dr. Isaiah Oke, the president of the association disclosed these at a press conference held inside the hospital. The association is also alleging that the hospital’s new management led by the CMD has declared to make life unbearable for her members and the hallmark of this undesirable attitude was the destruction of their lounge located inside the hospital complex.
The United State Agency for International Development (USAID) on Thursday began the construction of its warehouse for proper storage of essential medicines and health products in Nigeria. Speaking at the Ground Breaking Ceremony in Lagos, its Director, Mr Mike Harvey, said the project was a state-of-the-art warehouse. The “Warehouse-In-a Box’’ is sited at the Federal Medical Store Oshodi, Lagos. “This warehouse will serve as a storage facility, one of those planned to be built in Lagos with the support of the U.S. and the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria.
“This facility will support the country’s pharmaceutical supply chain, and once this is up and running, the warehouse will make sure that women, children and families in Nigeria get quality drugs. “It will also help to provide quality drugs in every part of the country,’’ Harvey said. He added that the warehouse would be funded by USAID and the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria. “The total fund for the construction would be five million dollars, with USAID providing four million, while Global Fund and the private sector will source the rest,’’ he said.
New research has revealed that Ebola can survive in detectable concentrations in wastewater for eight days – a finding that has implications for the disposal of contaminated liquid waste during epidemics and outbreaks. The study, by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Drexel University, both in Philadelphia, and the National Institute of Health (NIH), is published in the Environmental Science & Technology Letters. According to the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) situation report, there have been 28,005 confirmed cases and 11,287 deaths as a result of the virus since cases were first reported in March 2014.
In their background information, the authors note that in the wake of the outbreak, there remained significant questions on the appropriate handling of virus-contaminated liquid waste and one of these concerns is the persistence of Ebola in wastewater. Studies have indicated that the virus can persist in survivors. For example, one study describes how viable Ebola virus was found in the eye of a survivor months after recovery. In contrast, there is limited data on the fate and transport of Ebola in wastewater collection systems.
No fewer than 500 medical and health personnel in Borno are to be trained on to provide psychosocial support to Internally Displaced Person (IDP’s) in 17 camps in the state. Alhaji Sale Mene, the Executive Secretary of Borno State Primary Health Care Management Board (BPHCMB), stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Maiduguri on Friday. Mene said the training was necessary to assist traumatized victims of Boko Haram to enabled them overcome the shock of their past experiences and return to normal life.
“Most of the IDP’s, especially women, have suffered much emotional harm, pain, trauma and shock. A lot of them have bitter experiences, while many have seen terrible things while in captivity. “Some of these women from Bama will tell you that they had been in the town for two years even while Boko Haram had captured the town.“We therefore have a lot of work to do. We need to build their confidence and give them the courage to move on. This is because some of them have lost everything.
Red Cross urges Nigerians to donate blood twice yearly
Written by Super User
Vice chairman of the Nigeria Red Cross Society, Anambra State chapter, Prof. Peter Katchy has urged residents to imbibe the habit of donating blood twice a year in order to meet the blood requirement in the state.
He made the appeal during an interactive session with newsmen in Onitsha, Anambra State following the shortage of blood to meet emergency health situations and hospitals’ needs within Anambra and the country. “One of the major Red Cross activities in Anambra State is Blood Donors Recruitment drive. Red Cross calls on the people of the state to develop the habit of engaging in voluntary blood donation as a way of life in order to enable the state and country meet the requirements of demand for safe blood transfusion services,” he said.
It was fun for me when I disembarked from Kenya Airways on Sunday 9th August 2015 in Nairobi because I met Mallam Kabiru Yusuf, the Publisher of Daily Trust and his family by chance. Between the airport tarmac and arrival lobby, we spent about 40 minutes and it was chats all through. For a curious reader, I and Mallam Kabiru had a story. I first met him in July 2002 at a cocktail party organized by the United States embassy in Abuja. We had a brief chat and its outcome is my starting a weekly health column in Daily Trust in October same year, thirteen years now.
The rest is history. In our informal chat at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport I complained to him that the media didn’t report the recent visit of PMB to United States as it should be, as I expected to read, listen and watch robust commentary about the potential support that World Bank promised Nigeria, its implications to health sector and sustainable development, as well as a strong call by the media for prudent, transparent and efficient spending of the expected funds. And equally to match the World Bank funds with domestic counterpart financial resources.
It is a rare medical feat and a welcome development
A new anti-malaria vaccine called Mosquirix was recently approved by the European drugs regulators. Projected as the solution to malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills one child every 30 seconds, about 3,000 children everyday worldwide and over 300,000 Nigerians every year, it is already being recommended as safe and effective to use on babies in Africa. If the trials prove to be successful, and the economics work, this will be a major breakthrough in the fight against a scourge that is without any doubts the biggest killer-disease on the continent.
The office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, Ray Chambers’, once drew attention to the fact that more than 90 per cent of the world’s malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. That then explains why we believe that this vaccine could not have come at a better time, even though this is just the beginning of what could also be a long road before it would become readily available to the end-users.
Kidney transplants: Private hospitals can help check medical tourism
Written by Super User
Private hospitals are leading state-run facilities in the race to make Nigeria a hub of kidney transplants and reduce the number of patients going abroad for the procedure, a urologist, Dr Olusola Ajamu has said.
He said a little government support could increase access to transplants in a matter of months. A team of local and foreign doctors completed four kidney transplants at Abuja-based Zenith Hospital last week, the second after two previous transplants in May.
“We have few government hospitals in Nigeria who have done some surgeries, like University College Hospital, Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ife, but it is only private hospitals that are championing kidney transplants,” Ajamu told Daily Trust health desk. Ajamu was among four local experts who took part in the surgeries, and two more will hold in October.
An increasing number of private hospitals in Lagos and Abuja have since last year successfully done kidney transplants at costs lower than charges in India, where up to 5,000 Nigerians travel every month for medical care, costing Nigeria up to N78 billion annually, according to some reports. Olusola said more Nigerians with chronic kidney disease are becoming aware they need dialysis or transplant but the development of kidney transplant is at a stage where it is still capital intensive.
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Nigeria loses a sum of N250 billion annually to medical tourism, the Nigeria Medical Association(NMA) has said. To put an end to such capital flight, the NMA recommended the upgrading of the country’s tertiary institutions and replacing their obsolete equipment with modern ones. In a communiqué at the end of its national executive council (NEC) meeting in Ilorin, Kwara state ,the association said it was opposed to giving girls out in marriage before the age of 18. The communiqué was jointly signed by NMA President and Secretary General, Dr Kayode Obembe and Dr Adewunmi Alayaki.
Reading the communiqué, Dr Obembe urged President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint a medical doctor as the minister of health, adding that “doctors who take care of the sick must be accorded priority in the scheme of things.” Part of the communiqué reads: “NMA has been clamouring for the post of Surgeon General which is paramount in our health system. Examples we can point to are: Attorney General of the Federation, Accountant General of the Federation and Surveyor General and Auditor General.
No part of public service in Nigeria has experienced more strikes than the health sector. Right now, public tertiary hospitals in Nigeria are struggling to get back to life after another series of strikes. The University College Hospital, Ibadan, was crippled for 108 days by a strike called by the Association of Resident Doctors. At LAUTECH Oshogbo, a strike closed the hospital for 5 months, and in the Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba, doctors walked away from their duty posts leaving their patients to their own means. The story of the Federal Medical Centre in Owerri is already legendary, as health workers came to “work” every day but spent their time singing and praying on the hospital grounds, while ignoring their patients in the wards, protesting against the privatisation of some of the hospitals services. Their strike lasted for three months.
This story map details the major health sector strikes in 2015. Last year, many public sector hospitals across the country were closed for about half of the year following strikes as doctors refused to return to work, even during the Ebola outbreak. Almost as soon as they returned, other health sector workers under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) proceeded to strike from November 2014 to February 2015. When there are strikes in public sector hospitals, there are only two constituencies that suffer: a) the patients, and b) the tax-payer (i.e. you and I), who do not get a service that is paid for on our behalf by government.
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday restated his resolve to ensure that Nigeria is finally certified polio-free by 2017, saying all Nigerians must join hands with the federal government to achieve this .Buhari said this at separate meetings with governors of polio-vulnerable states and members of the High-Level Advocacy Group. The president noted that for the country to become polio-free permanently, it must build on its achievement of being polio-free for 12 months, which was marked in July. Senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, quoted Buhari as saying he had initiated the meetings with the governors and Advocacy Group members because the country could not afford a reversal of what had been achieved after 17 years of the polio eradication programme in Nigeria.
The president said: “I want to reaffirm the commitment of the federal government to sustain the gains and momentum to enable Nigeria achieve certification by 2017. “I am, therefore, inviting you to join me in actualizing this pledge as experts have cautioned that the progress we have made in the polio eradication efforts is still very fragile and that there is the risk of gains reversal if we don’t sustain this great effort and allow complacency to set in.“As you are aware, the fact that we have not had any case of polio for over a year now does not mean that we are polio-free; it is just one of the milestones on the path to being polio-free.
Exhibition: Medic West Africa to enhance healthcare education in the region
The 4th edition of Medic West Africa Exhibition and Congress (MWA),organised by Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions, will take place on 14-16 October 2015 at the Eko International Convention & Exhibition Center, Lagos, Nigeria. The event boasts a strong healthcare education programme as well as CPD accredited master classes taught by some of the key healthcare companies in the industry. “Medic West Africa is primarily concerned with providing accredited medical education to healthcare professionals who are interested in updating and furthering their clinical knowledge and skills,".
Jamie Hill, Director, Informa Life Sciences Group, Africa, said, adding that "by ensuring that our conferences are accredited and our speakers are leading experts in their fields, MWA is committed to providing the best possible medical education available within Nigeria and West Africa." This year's main conference themes are quality, diabetes care, cardio-renal disease, healthcare financing and social media in healthcare. The conferences are offered in partnership with Beyhealth, and in association with the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria. “We are introducing the interactive social media workshop hosting experts from both a social media background and a healthcare background, to discuss the importance of social media in advancing healthcare in West Africa,” adds Mr. Hill.
