Chioma Umeha

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners on Tuesday, launched the U-Report, an innovative SMS-based platform that empowers Nigerians by enabling them to participate and engage in policy-making and governance and access real time information on key social issues.  U-Report enables those who voluntarily register – known as U-reporters – to speak-out on what is happening in their communities, provides a forum to amplify their voices through local and national media, sends alerts to key stakeholders about the issues their constituents are facing, and feeds back useful information to the U-Reporters, so they are empowered to work for positive change and improvements in their localities. The platform provides decision makers a forum to listen to millions of voices through simple messaging.  In the last one year with support from Airtel, MTN, GLO and Etisalat the number of U-reporters has rapidly grown to about 200,000 with thousands joining every month from all p

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched the African Vaccination Week (AVW) in Lusaka, Zambia, under the theme ‘’Vaccination, a gift for life.’’  According to the WHO’s, website, the event marks the commencement of week-long immunisation activities from April 24 to April 30 across all 47 countries in the WHO African Region. “Immunisation is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions but many children and adults still do not have access to many life-saving vaccines.  “It is estimated that about three million children under the age of five years die each year in the African Region and a significant number of these deaths could be prevented by receiving immunisation,’’ the WHO said. The global world body noted that the AVW was designed to strengthen public awareness and demand for immunisation by communities, improve access for high-risk populations and isolated areas in the region.  It added that the campaign would provide an opportunity to increase

An international team of researchers from Bristol, Dresden, Munich, Vienna and Denver have successfully completed the first step in the development of an insulin vaccine to prevent type 1 diabetes. The Pre-POINT study has found a positive immune response in children at risk of type 1 diabetes who were given oral doses of insulin, an agency report said Tuesday.  Adverse reactions such as hypoglycaemia were not observed. The findings, published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), support the need for a next phase of testing, which will determine whether an insulin vaccine can prevent the outbreak of the disease over the longer term. Children with type 1 diabetes require several insulin injections every day of their lives. This is because the body’s own immune system destroys the beta cells in the pancreas – the cells that produce insulin. This is a process that starts early. Instead of ignoring proteins such as insulin, the immune defences see insulin and other pr

Continued from last week  The new report was published recently in The Cochrane Library. For the review, Caldwell’s team reviewed 16 published studies involving more than 1,600 children, with about half trying simple interventions. Among them were fluid retention, rewards for dry nights (such as stars on chart), and lifting children and taking them to the bathroom after they have been asleep.  No one simple strategy worked better than another, the researchers found. When they compared alarm training with the simple strategies, the alarm training was more effective. And treatment with medication alone was better than the simple interventions. However, the researcher noted that “the findings from this review should be interpreted cautiously due to the poor quality and small sizes of the trials.” The findings suggest that parents may want to start with simple treatments, Caldwell said, “then move to alarm training or medication if simple treatments do not work after trying for

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

The saying ‘Children are gifts from above’, can be said to be true in the case of Ediddiong, a talented child born to the family of the Williams in July 1999. Like every other child she came into this world healthy and medically fit. But, within the first four months of her life, it became obvious that she was missing expected developmental milestone of a normal baby, such as; difficulty in breast feeding, not being able to control her neck, and then sit like a baby should, she began diminishing also, in size. This being a great source of concern for the parents, they were forced to visit several hospitals in search of proper medical intervention. After several recommendations and prescriptions, they were advised to enroll Ediddiong at a home (ModupeCole/Home for the Disabled). But, because of the love the parents had for her, they could not abandon Ediddiong and therefore, decided to take her back home where they continued to seek for possible ways to make her life better. They w

Lagos residents took the streets in solidarity for girls and women undergoing pain and trauma of endometriosis – an incurable gynaecological disorder that occurs when the endometrium (cells lining the uterus) grow in other areas of the body, weekend. Clad in bright yellow as well as black T-shirts, the participants marched the streets distributing leaflets designed to educate and inform the general public about the campaign against the debilitating disorder – endometriosis. The parade which drew attention of residents saw avid women and men chanting songs and different slogans: ‘STOP ‘Endo’ Pain. “Ask Me About Endo Pain”; “You are not alone. Take a stand for your wives, sisters, daughters, because it matters!” Women with the disorder readily feel pain, irregular bleeding and have problems getting pregnant. The Endomarch is a platform to educate, empower, and effect change to the devastating disorder. A walk tagged, EndoMarch 2015, held in Lagos weekend directed towards endin

Making changes to the diet is one of the easiest ways to naturally treat hepatitis. Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver and is usually caused by hepatitis, but it can be caused by other factors such as toxins, medications and infections. There are different types of hepatitis, but it tends to share the same types of symptoms. However, you need to know about dietary treatment of the acute hepatitis phase which occurs in hepatitis A, B, C, D and E and what can be done to manage chronic hepatitis conditions. A patient suffering from acute infectious hepatitis will experience severe loss of appetite or anorexia, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, taste changes, fever and jaundice. All these symptoms complicate food intake and make it difficult to ensure that the patient is well nourished at a time when it is essential to provide the patient with a highly nutritious diet to prevent liver damage. There are essentials which your diet should include if you have acute hepatitis infection:

As part of activities to celebrate this year’s World Oral Health Day, the 68 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital, Yaba (NARHY), Lagos, embarked on a walk on Wednesday, which was targeted to create awareness about good oral health. The participants wearing white T-shirts and wine-coloured cap started from the Physiotherapy field of the hospital through Jibowu, Tejuosho market, Herbert Macaulay to Myhoung Barracks and terminated at the Physiotherapy field of the hospital, distributing leaflets designed to educate and inform the general public about the relationship between oral health and general well-being. Findings show that many Nigerians have lost their lives to preventable oral health related diseases due to ignorance. The World Oral Health Day is celebrated throughout the world on March 20, each year with a wide range of awareness-raising activities organized by dentists, dental students, the National Dental Associations (NDAs) and corporate partners to create awareness about the