EVEN though Nigeria was not listed as one of the countries to be visited by President Barack Obama on his maiden trip to Africa last weekend, the American leader nevertheless found it expedient to single out for special mention, Nigeria’s path-breaking interfaith initiative to defeat malaria.

Health Minister Prof. Babatunde Oshotimehin has attributed poor and inadequate funding, poor political will as the major challenges facing the control of epidemic outbreak in the West African countries.

THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD Frank Emeka Ozor, an Evangelist from Delta State needs help and needs it fast. Fortunes forthe fair-skinned man, who has been evangelising for a few years, suddenly took a turn for the worse during one of his evangelisations, when he was involved in a road traffic accident.

ALL roads led to the sleepy town of Epe in Lagos State Thursday last week as people from far and near converged at the Epe General Hospital for a special event never before witnessed within the environs. It was the official dedication of the NNPC/Chevron Joint Venture medical incinerator project built in partnership with the Lagos State government.

As part of its campaign against hypertension, the Nigerian Hypertension Society (NHS) has launched its continuing medical education (CME) programme for doctors and other specialists who care for patients with hypertension in the country.

THE high burden of mortality and morbidity of various forms of fistula amongst Nigerian women has become so worrisome that calls for urgent action to protect lives of those affected are being made.

NIGERIAN men have been enjoined to protect women from situations that may expose them to depression, even as it has been noted that one in every five Nigerian women is down with depression.

The ongoing Close Up Brush Day and Night campaign aimed at changing the poor oral hygiene habits of Nigerians as well as encourage brushing day and night has been applauded by the heads of Primary Schools visited by the Social Mission crew, which is commissioned for the pan-Nigeria activations in 600 schools across the country. The crew has already visited schools in Lagos, Imo and Kano States.

As Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State kicked off another round of the Sub-National Immunization Plus Days (SNIDs)in Lagos weekend, said that all the 35 Governors in Nigeria are working out the modality of setting aside a special day for the marking of polio.

Integration of the newly procured Field Hospital into the Lagos State Eko Free Health Mission is yielding fruis if the expression of less privileged Nigerians who converged at the premises of Araromi Primary School, Achakpo Road, Ajegunle in the Ajeromi/Ifelodun Local Government Area seeking for free medical services, was anything to go by last week.

Even as the Changing Diabetes Care in Nigeria Summit opens in Lagos today at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers, the Diabetes Association of Nigeria is joining voices with the African Diabetes Declaration and Strategies to call on the Federal Governemnt to establish policies that would make management and care of diabetes in the country more affordable and accessible.

THE Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has raised alarm over the proliferation of fake and substandard drugs in the country and is calling on President Umar Yar’Adua to declare a national emergency in the nation’s drug industry in the interest of national wellbeing and security.

A TOTAL of 104 free eye surgeries have been carried out on 66 children from the less privileged homes in Abuja by an Indian NGO – Tulsi Chanrai Foundation (TCF).

Health experts have lamented inability of medical researchers to find a lasting cure in the form of a reliable vaccine for malaria and HIV even though potential benefits of efficacious malaria or HIV vaccines are not in doubt.

With the ratio of one nurse to 30 patients in most hospitals across the nation, management of National Orthopaedic Hospital Enugu (NOHE) says the establishment of a Post Basic School of Nursing in the hospital is aimed at improving the poor ratio of nurses to patient in the country, particularly in the area of orthopaedic, burns/plastic nursing.