Chioma Umeha

By Chioma Umeha In recent years, the world has recorded tremendous progress in the fight against malaria. The World Malaria Report 2015 shows malaria mortality rates have fallen by 66 per cent among all age groups and by 71 per cent among children under five in Africa since 2000. But, there is still work to do just as a new vaccine developed by a US-based team is showing promising results, and could accelerate progress. Creating the vaccine, researchers infected people with weakened, genetically modified forms of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite in safety trials. The weakened malaria parasite, while unable to complete its lifecycle and develop into full-blown malaria, exposes the immune system to the disease and stimulates a response that could block an actual infection. After tests on ten people during trials, the results were encouraging: there were no cases of full malaria infection and no significant side-effects. Describing the positive test res

By Chioma Umeha FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria PLC, weekend, witnessed a fire outbreak in the condensed factory at its premises in Ogba Industrial Estate, Ikeja, Lagos State, but was immediately brought under control. According to Ore Famurewa, Corporate Affairs Director: “The fire was promptly put under control by the Lagos State Fire Service, supported by FrieslandCampina WAMCO Safety Team and corporate neighbours.”’ The fire was, however, promptly put under control by the Lagos State Fire Service supported by FrieslandCampina WAMCO safety team and corporate neighbours. No casualties were recorded in the process, as immediate action was taken to safeguard the lives of employees on duty by evacuating them. Only the conveyor area of the condensed factory was affected through a mass conveyor carrying empty cans to the filling room. The company’s Corporate Affairs Director, Mrs. Ore Famurewa, in a statement issued yesterday said: “The fire outbreak, which occurred

By Chioma Umeha The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has called on pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies to take advantage of its arrangements with the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) to facilitate a smooth registration process in 2017. Pharm. Ahmed Yakasai, President of PSN, said in a release that the arrangement was particularly key to achieving a faster pace of licensure of practitioners and pharmacy facilities to ensure that the tenets of Good Pharmacy Practice (GPP) are entrenched for consumers of health in Nigeria. Yakasai explained that in 2017 the procedures would entail that all pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies fulfil the protocols of regularising their membership of PSN following which they would be issued Clearance Certificates by the respective state branches. The release read: “Regularisation of membership will include the payment of a compulsory building fee of N5, 000 in line with resolution of the National Council of P

• Kangaroo Mother Care Can Avert Such Loss – Experts By  Chioma Umeha Before the curtain of last year closed, about 240,000 premature Nigerian children died from complications, according to Mamaye 2016 factsheet on Nigeria preterm babies, mainly due to lack of incubators and other specialized devices to care for them in the country’s health facilities. Yet, only few parents are aware that a skin-to-skin form of care between a mother and her baby, known as kangaroo mother care (KMC), is an effective alternative to an incubator. Experts said, the KMC, if initiated immediately and continuously after birth, will save premature babies from death or complications. Rebecca Akinwale, middle aged mother is one of the few examples of the success stories of Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC). She gave birth to a preterm – baby David who was at birth 1.2kg, but now is 1.99kg through the aid of Kangaroo Mother Care method. She told Independent: “When I gave birth to David, I wa

By Chioma Umeha The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is investing as much as 44 billion naira, an equivalent of $140 million to support development of a tiny implantable drug pump it believes could help prevent people in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere from becoming infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The matchstick-size pump is being developed by Intarcia Therapeutics Inc., a closely held Boston biotechnology company, according to FOX News Health. It can hold six or 12 months’ supply of medicine and is designed to deliver microdoses continuously to patients, ensuring they stay on the treatment. The new investment which Intarcia announced weekend, comes amid a flurry of fresh efforts to develop HIV prevention strategies. Last week, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced a global 4,500-patient clinical trial to test whether injections every eight weeks of an experimental HIV drug, cabotegravir, from U.K.-based ViiV H

Abiodun Adewuya, a Professor of Psychiatrics in Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and a Psychiatrist, recently spoke with CHIOMA UMEHA on issues of mental health in Lagos State. Excerpts: A medical doctor recently stated that it is not only the people, who are mentally deranged and roam the streets that are mentally sick. How do you identify those that have mental issues? Well, mental health problem are diverse in that there are some with mild mental health problems, which is called common mental disorder; there are some moderate ones; there are some severe ones. Yes! The doctor is very correct. It is only those ones that have severe cases that are likely to be seen on the streets. But, what we are trying to do is to make sure that we prevent that from happening. One thing is to treat the people that have already broken down, that have severe mental illness. But, the best way to tackle common mental disorder is by treating the mild and moderate me

By Chioma Umeha A non-governmental initiative, Save the Children, has lamented the ugly impact of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) with its complication in the country, noting that it has killed many children in Katsina State due to non-release of Nutrition Support Funds by some local governments. Nura Muhammad, the Area Operations Manager of the initiative, who said this in Katsina, on Monday, explained that Save the Children and UNICEF support children with malnutrition in 109 Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) centres in 15 local government areas of the State. Muhammad said: “ Save the Children and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) support children with malnutrition in 109 community to manage the condition. Muhammad also said that each of the benefiting local government was expected to contribute N250,000 for the purchase of drugs to children with SAM complications monthly. According to him, a malnourished child with other sickness

•As Self-repair Of Teeth Replaces Fillings – Scientists   By Chioma Umeha Teeth can be encouraged to repair themselves in a way that could see an end to fillings, say scientists. Scientific Reports, an online journal said: “The stem cells in our teeth can be energized to fill in chips, cracks, and cavities, researchers say, and the findings could one day possibly make dental cement obsolete.” The work has been conducted just in mice so far, but the research, published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, highlights a way to motivate stem cells to repair tooth defects at a scale they normally cannot, with a drug that already has some safety testing behind it. The team at King’s College London showed that a chemical could encourage cells in the dental pulp to heal small holes in mice teeth. A biodegradable sponge was soaked in the drug and then put inside the cavity. The study, published in Science Reports, showed it led to “complete, effective nat

By Chioma Umeha The US National Institutes of Health has urged mothers to start regular feeding of their babies from between four and six months of age, with foods containing peanuts, saying that this lowers their chances of becoming allergic. The new guidelines explain that recent scientific research has demonstrated that introducing peanut-containing foods to children as young as four to six months can prevent the development of allergies, which tend to start in childhood and continue through adulthood. The guidelines, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, are based on the results of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) clinical trial in 2015 that found an 81 percent reduction in children thought to be at high-risk of developing a peanut allergy from doing so after the early introduction of peanut consumption as infants. With allergies among children on the rise in recent years, and no treatment or cure a

By Chioma Umeha •             Culture Prohibits Mothers From Feeding Newborns With Colostrum •             UNICEF Seeks Expansion Of Interventions To All LGAs   By Onche Odeh The figures are scary but real. That more than half the number of all children between the ages of six to 59 months you see in Bauchi are stunted or low height for age, a form of malnutrition caused by long-term insufficient nutrient intake and frequent infections. The situation is not better with women as Bauchi is rated in the 2015 National Nutrition Health Survey (NNHS 2015) among 10 states, mostly in Northern Nigeria with over 10 per cent prevalence level of malnutrition in Nigeria. In 2014, Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) were reported above critical cut-off points of 15 per cent and two per cent respectively for Bauchi and two other States including Jigawa and Yobe. Although none of the States surveyed in 2015 reported such critical prevalenc