Frontpage News (3249)
The government of Ekiti through the State Hospital Management Board (HMB) is making moves to re-position the healthcare system in the state and boosting healthcare delivery. To achieve these, the governor of the state, Ayodele Fayose has directed that medical facilities in the state should be properly equipped and adequately staffed. To this effect, the State Hospital Management Board (HMB) has commenced the process of recruiting no fewer than 100 medical personnel in compliance with the instruction.
The Permanent Secretary (HMB), Dr. Kolawole Aina, who made this known, in Ado- Ekiti, disclosed that the agency had commenced interviewing shortlisted candidates from about 1,000 applicants for the various existing vacancies. Aina said that 20 medical doctors and 50 nurses would be recruited into the public service in the course of the exercise. He listed other cadres to be employed to include pharmacists, health assistants, health information officers, dental technicians, physiotherapist, medical laboratory scientists and image scientists.
According to him, the existing vacancies were consequential upon disengagement of workers from the public service, noting that many workers had retired without corresponding replacement over the years.
Source:Healthnews Nigeria
The Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, has reiterated her commitment to improve maternal health and reduce the rate of infant mortality in Nigeria. She made the statement on Thursday in Abuja when Mr Perry Colderwood, the Canadian High Commissioner to Nigeria paid her a courtesy visit at the Presidential Villa. She noted that the wife of any leader have the responsibility to assist her husband in various ways since he is busy with state affairs.
She said that this informed her decision to float her pet project, “Future Assured’’ to provide alternative life line for Nigerian women and children. “I decided to come up with a project called “Future Assured’’ to help in reducing maternal and infant mortality rate and support girl-child education. “The project is also to enlighten parents on how to restrain their children from being indoctrinated into social vices. “Monitoring daily activities and control of every child is a unique family affair. “We need to educate women on how to control their children in order to avoid a situation where they would fall victims of indoctrination to social vices inimical to the society,’’ she said.
The Federal Government has allayed fears while debunking rumours of another Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) incidence in Nigeria, following the rumour of a suspected outbreak in Cross River State of a 21 year-old-male student of the University of Calabar.. Speaking to journalists yesterday in Abuja over the rumours of an outbreak, the permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Mr Linus Awute, stated, “The Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) hereby confirms that there is no Ebola Virus Disease in Nigeria, and thus Nigeria remains Ebola- free.
Meanwhile, the victim was said to have been admitted in the casualty ward of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital by the mother and other family members with bleeding, diarrhea, vomiting, skin rashes and mouth lesions. His temperature on admission was 37 degrees centigrade and his vital signs were stable. The parents said that the patient had never travelled outside Calabar. On the basis of the signs and symptoms, a tentative diagnosis of viral hemorrhagic fever, to rule out Lassa fever was made.
The Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria (PCN) said at the weekend that it sealed 178 patent medicine stores in Rivers State. The council also said an undisclosed number of persons were arrested during their enforcement exercise in the state. The Director and Head of department in charge of inspection and monitoring at the council, Pharmacist Antonia Aruya, at a press briefing in Port Harcourt said they were in Rivers State to carry out an enforcementGlobal Efforts To Eradicate Polio Suffers Setback With New Case In "Laos" (NOT Lagos!)
World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday announced that Laos has suffered a case of vaccine- derived polio which is a new setback to a global effort to eradicate the crippling disease after the virus resurfaced in Ukraine and Mali. The WHO said an 8-year-old boy died of the disease on September 11, and genetic sequencing suggested the virus strain has been circulating in the area of Bolikhamxay province, which has low immunization rates, for more than two years. There is no cure for polio, which attacks the nervous system and could cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. But a global vaccination campaign has all but beaten the wild polio virus, with only Pakistan and Afghanistan reporting cases of wild polio virus infection this year.
Specialists have warned that vaccine-derived cases – such as this one in Laos and previous ones in Ukraine and Mali – could hamper progress towards global eradication. The WHO stressed that “ending polio for good requires eliminating both wild and vaccine-derived polio.” It added, however, that because of relatively limited travel to and from this area,
The director general, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Prof John Idoko, has said that Nigeria is at a critical stage of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to him, having reached the progress of halting HIV/AIDS transmission to less than 4 per cent in 2010, the country is now on its way to eliminating the scourge. Idoko made these disclosures yesterday in Abuja when he led the management team of the agency on a courtesy visit to the headquarters of LEADERSHIP Newspapers Group.
The NACA DG who solicited partnership with LEADERSHIP Group, explained that at this stage, information going out is very critical with regards to passing the right messages across. He said, “The number of new infections is coming down; the number of people dying from HIV is coming down and one of the big areas we are struggling with, interrupting transmission from HIV positive women to their babies is also coming down. So, we are very grateful to your paper and all the others that have supported us.
Worried that over 40 per cent of Nigeria’s adult population is hypertensive; the Federal Ministry of Health has entered into partnership with Neimeth Pharmaceuticals which sees the price of antihypertensive drugs cut by half. According to the Director of Food and Drug Services at the Ministry, Gloria Chukwumah, “4.5 million Nigerians over the age of 15 are hypertensive. The prevalence is much more in the urban than in the rural areas and it affects 40 per cent of the adult population.”
She stated this yesterday at the inauguration of the FITGAH (Fight the Good Fight Against Hypertension) Partnership Working Committee by the permanent secretary of the Ministry, Mr Linus Awute saying the scope of this partnership which will cut across the urban and rural divide will involve mass screening and isolation and medicine administration at lower cost up to 50 per cent for free. He said the committee will work to bring other organisations into the fight against hypertension to promote efficient healthcare delivery system through rational drug use.
The Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS (NEPWHAN), has said that out of the estimated 3.5 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS, only about 700,000 have access to anti-retroviral treatment, meaning that 2.8 million Nigerians have no access to treatment. It also raised the alarm that these 2.8 million people living with HIV may be on their way to untimely death if the government does not act fast to arrest the situation. This was disclosed yesterday in Abuja by the chairman of NEPWHAN’s board of trustees, Abdulrahman Momodu, at the inauguration of new executives of the association.
He said though the board of trustees, since the establishment of NEPWHAN in 1998 has refrained from making public statements on issues, there were compelling reasons now why the association must speak so as to draw the attention of the government to their plight, whose existence is now being threatened by declining care and support. He said, “it is on this note that we passionately appeal to Mr President to do all within his power to prevent avoidable death.”
UNICEF says not less than 800 of about 1,400 child deaths Nigeria are caused by diarrhoea daily which could be attributed to poor sanitation and inadequate water. This is contained in a statement signed by the Chief of Communication, UNICEF, Ms Doune Porter, on Thursday inAbuja and made available to the News agency of Nigeria (NAN). It said that children at the first month of their lives were very vulnerable to diseases easily transmitted through unwashed hands. "Over 800 of the approximately 1,400 child deaths from diarrhoea each day can be attributed to inadequate water, sanitation or hygiene.
"Infants in the first months of life are particularly vulnerable to diseases transmitted by unwashed hands,” it said. According to the statement, an average of 82 per cent of people washes their hands before eating, while only 53 per cent of people washed their hands with soap after defecation. It also said that only about 14 per cent of people washed their hands with soap after cleaning a child’s faeces which posed a serious public health risk. "Regular hand washing with soap after using toilet, after changing children’s nappies and before eating or handling food saves more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention.
AS part of efforts to tackle capacity gaps in the health sector and develop the next generation of healthcare leaders who will excel in governance, management and quality healthcare service provision, a new private sector initiative, Healthcare Leadership Academy (HLA), has emerged. An intervention of the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PSHAN), Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF), alongside Cambridge University, Duke University, Lagos Business School, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, and advisory, research and capacity development for the health sector (EpiAFRIC), HLA seeks to plug leadership gaps in the health sector and reduce the level of health tourism from Nigeria to other parts of the world.
Co-chair, PSHAN, Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, at the launch of the initiative told selected participants: “There is leadership and management deficit at different levels of the health care system that impede the delivery of expected quality care. This developmental gap is made evident by the low productivity and skill set of healthcare workers and the poor financial health of the institutions they manage.” The PSHAN, in a statement, noted that PSHAN and HSDF brokered and convened partners and institutions to develop the HLA to incorporate leadership, quality improvement and private sector business management approaches in the provision of quality care and governance of institutions.
More...
How Perm Sec Wanted Leaving Health Ministry Fearing Ebola Resurgence
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr Linus Awute had made unsuccessful underground plans to leave the ministry fearing that Ebola Virus Disease which Nigeria contained its spread in October 2014 would resurface. It would be recalled that Ebola was introduced into Nigeria on 20 July 2014 when an infected Liberian man, Patrick Sawyer arrived by aeroplane into Lagos. The man, who died in hospital 5 days later, set off a chain of transmission that infected a total of 19 people, of whom 7 died.
According to World Health Organistion (WHO) recommendations, the end of an Ebola virus disease outbreak in a country can be declared once 42 days have passed and no new cases have been detected. The 42 days represents twice the maximum incubation period for Ebola (21 days). This 42-day period starts from the last day that any person in the country had contact with a confirmed or probable Ebola case. And on October 20 2014, Nigeria reached that 42-day mark and is now considered free of Ebola transmission.
CureChat is a new app aimed at Reducing Loss of Lives caused by Ignorance through Effective Public Health Awareness Providing for the long needed technological solution to bridge the gap between doctors and patients in Nigeria, the new app CureChat was launched in September 2015. Malnutrition, Malaria, Typhoid among other illnesses have been burning problems in Nigeria and the bordering countries in Africa for many decades without complete eradication. These public health issues have been a major burden on the country’s economy affecting the day-to-day life of every citizen.
CureChat Ltd is up for the Challenge Lack of health awareness has been a major cause of the number of deaths reported in Nigeria yearly. There is a clear need to identify an approach to creating public health awareness in a rather effective manner in order to reduce the number of loss of lives caused by ignorance in Nigeria and Africa. CureChat Ltd pitches their new startup under the limelight that people nowadays have easier access to the internet and new technology than in the past, which can be helpful in creating more awareness on public health.
In its final push to eradicate polio in the country, the federal government says it’s currently carrying out routine immunisation exercise in 96 internally displaced camps (IDPs) across the country. This was disclosed yesterday in Abuja by the executive director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Ado Mohammed ,to Flagg off the October 2015 Polio Immunisation Plus Days. He said that in the Federal Capital Territory, the Feeral Government through the agency has provided four rounds of the immunisation campaign so that every eligible child would be reached during the programme.
He also disclosed that the next polio immunisation campaign in 11 polio vulnerable states, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara commences tommorrow. According to Ado, a total of 32 million children are being targeted during the campaign across the vulnerable states. He also solicited for the continued support of all Nigerians, especially the press to be advocates of continous vaccination of children in the country until the World Health Organisation (WHO) certifies Nigeria a polio-free country in 2017.
The Health Ministry is an inter-professional sector, previous health ministers seem to forget this simple fact, they focus all their energy trying to serve the interest of the NMA at the expense of other professional interest in the health sector. Nigeria need a change from the past, we need a minister who will separate his/her personal professional interest and commitments from affecting his duties to Nigerian people, and make qualityhealth care delivery utmost priority instead of welfare and interest of Doctors. Most ministers in recent past have failed the sector and country due to their inability to remove their primary professional constituency interest from interfering with their roles as ministers of health, they left other professional group to languish in neglect resulting in many unnecessary industrial unrest.
They ended up becoming ministers of doctors, rather than ministers of health, a ministerial candidate was asked during the ongoing senate screening what he will do to prevent industrial unrest in the health sector and he started talking about engaging resident doctors because he is a medical doctor, how about the nurses, pharmacist, medical scientists, physiotherapist …An example is the recent past Minister of Health, Prof. Oyebuchi Chukwu, who refused to obey all court rulingsfavouring other health professionals, but will quickly implement those favouring his immediate constituency the NMA and MDCN.
