Chioma Umeha

Waking in the middle of the night to change your child’s sheets after a bedwetting episode is practically a rite of passage for parents. And it is more common than you think. Scientists have said that there is no one single cause of bed-wetting, but if you want an easy target, look no farther than your own DNA. Reasons for bedwetting are not totally understood, but experts think it may be associated with the time it takes children to develop control over the bladder, a complex milestone. The timing varies from child to child. From five to seven million children wet the bed some or most nights – with twice as many boys wetting their bed as girls. After age five, about 15 per cent of children continue to wet the bed, and by age 10, 95 per cent of children are dry at night. While techniques such as fluid restriction can help some children who have problems with bedwetting, alarms and medications are more effective, a new study finds. “Simple behavioural therapies such as rewarding

While some health watchers are busy celebrating the expected malaria vaccine that will prevent millions of young children from catching the disease, some experts have raised doubts over the ability of Nigeria to provide required funding to rid the vector. The new vaccine would be available in October after trial results found that it reduces number of cases by half. But, experts have said that Nigeria’s programme on malaria may be far from achieving the desired result of eliminating malaria unless there is further cheering news about the trial vaccines currently going on in seven African countries. Although the promising trial vaccine which has been tested on 16,000 children from seven African countries excluding Nigeria found that booster doses were of limited use and vaccines in young babies were not effective, experts have warned that unless more funding is made available, Nigeria may never be rid of the malaria vector.  Scientists gathering at the Nigerian Institute of Medical