Chioma Umeha

By Chioma Umeha The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has launched a website that will be at the centre of the digital channels to be deployed for communications functions. The site, which is now live, will also serve as the primary source of health information to Nigerian citizens, journalists and health workers for information on how to protect themselves from health threats. At the official launch in Abuja, CEO of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, appreciated the role of the University of Maryland, MGIC-Nigeria project in the implementation of the project. He said communications and technology, would play major role in the overall fulfilment of the mandate of the NCDC. “We are not deploying a back office for communications at the NCDC, we are picking the best hands possible and we are placing the function at the level it deserves to be. The website we are launching today is core to all our activities and we hope it goes ahead to fulfil our intentions in the

By Chioma Umeha The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Oyo State Chapter has said that the National Health Act, if implemented would benefit the citizenry and solve the problems militating against the health sector. Dr Omolola Oladele, the Chairperson of the union stated this when the union visited the Oyo State Governor’s Office on Wednesday to submit a letter to the governor on the act. The National Health Act, which took 10 years and several readings at the National Assembly was passed and signed into law in 2014. The union had visited to appeal to the federal government to implement the health act, which they said has been abandoned since 2014. Oladele said that the union had visited the governor’s office to awaken the consciousness of government to the implementation of the act and for the states to key in. “The National Health Act is all-encompassing for everybody, while every stakeholder will benefit from it. “The act proffer solution to the proble

By Chioma Umeha Here is some bad news: pneumonia kills many children and adults. Perhaps, the worse news is that everyone can get pneumonia, as long as you have lungs. Now experts are more worried that pneumonia could become a bigger problem in the future. In recognition of pneumonia being a major global health problem, World Pneumonia Day occurs every year on November 12. A coalition of organizations and advocates convened the first World Pneumonia Day in 2009, including, the Global Health Council, the GAVI Alliance, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, Save The Children (including ambassadors Gwyneth Paltrow and Hugh Laurie), the Pneumococcal vaccines Accelerated Development and Introduction Plan (PneumoADIP), and Hedge Funds vs. Malaria & Pneumonia. Of course, World Pneumonia Day is targeted to raise awareness of the problem and bring together people to find better ways to handle, diagnose, and treat pneumonia. Pneumonia affects people of all ages and income g

By Chioma Umeha The warning, steer clear of deep-fried and oily foods because the extra oil is bad for the heart as well as waistlines is not new. But, a new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nutrition, shows that it may be the temperature we are cooking food at that is the real problem, not the amount of oil we are using. “When food is heated up to a high temperature, new compounds are created, and some of them are known to be harmful to health,” said Raj Bhopal, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, who led the research. “This is not to do with frying. … it is more to do with the cooking process, with the temperature.” When foods are cooked at high temperatures, they release chemicals known as neo-formed contaminants, or NFCs. This group includes trans-fatty acids – or trans fats – that are known to increase the risk of heart disease. Cooking food at extremely high temperatures releases harmful chemicals. Trans fats and other chemi

By Chioma Umeha Idongesit Ashameri Uyo Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have pledged to partner with their counterparts in the Senate to ensure proper budgetary allocation for the health sector in the 2017 budget as deliberate measure to improve quality of lives for Nigerians. The legislators made the commitment recently, in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital at a legislative retreat on immunization, health financing and national health act, where they identified inadequate budgetary allocation and poor funding of the health sector as factors inhibiting quality health care delivery in Nigeria. The retreat which involved committee chairmen and members of the House of Representatives stressed that poor funding and budgetary allocation are barriers to achieving quality health care delivery in the country. To tackle these therefore, the lawmakers in the lower chamber have expressed preparedness to partner with their counterparts in the Senate to ens

By Chioma Umeha That Nigeria is among the countries with the highest burden of Mother to Child transmission (MTCT) of HIV in the world having at least 50,000 HIV positive babies annually is a big issue in the public health domain. More worrisome to health analysts is the country’s failure in meeting the global target of over 90 per cent PMTCT antiretroviral (ARV) coverage last year. Statistics from the National AIDS and STD Control Programme (NASCP) shows that Nigeria was only able to achieve 30 per cent PMTCT ARV coverage. It would be recalled that the HIV testing and counselling (HTC) was integrated into Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) week to help increase the coverage of PMTCT services. According to experts, the integration of HTC and MNCH will contribute to a significant reduction in mother to child transmission of HIV to enable the country to attain the global goal of an HIV free generation. The HCT-MNCH integration was to strengthen provisi

By Chioma Umeha Fresh revelations emerged on Monday, concerning the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) which claimed thousands of lives in West Africa, including Nigeria as researchers identified mutations in the virus that increased its ability to infect human cells from 2013 to 2016. The findings have been reported by two independent teams of researchers according to online news reports. In 2013, the Ebola virus started cutting a deadly swath through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it eventually infected 28,000 people, killing 11,000 of them. As it passed swiftly from person to person, a gene bearing the program for a key protein mutated in several places, researchers have found. In two articles published weekend, in the journal: Cell, researchers report that several of the mutations they observed made the virus better at infecting the cells of humans and other primates. Compared to a viral sample collected very early in the outbreak, samples that carr