Health & Environment Archives

Successful Pelvic Surgery

A team of Nigerian doctors carried out successful pelvic surgery on a patient with life threatening condition injured with a stick near his private part.

Kano State Contributory Health Care Agency Law 2016

Kano state government has signed into law the state Contributory Health Care Agency Bill 2016.

The Contributory Health Care is a scheme that, among other things, facilitates payment for medical and surgical expenses incurred by civil servants in the state, included in their benefit packages as a means of motivating them.

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Federal Government Of Nigeria Launches Wetin App [2016]

The Federal Government of Nigeria in Abuja has launched a smart phone application, Wetin App, for flood forecasting along the Niger and Benue rivers, which is available on Google App Store.

The Wetin App is a collaborative project of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

Continue reading Federal Government Of Nigeria Launches Wetin App [2016]

Brown Button Foundation: Mother’s Delivery Kit (MDK)

Adepeju Jaiyeoba is the founder and CEO of Mother’s Delivery Kit (MDK), a Lagos-based social enterprise established to promote and enhance safe births, instigate behavioural change and economically empower women in Nigeria.

In 2011, Adepeju Jaiyeoba lost her friend due to pregnancy/childbirth-related complications. This, and the fact that she saw women giving birth on bare floors, birth attendants severing umbilical cord with rusty blades or broken glass, jolted her into action.

The same year, she founded the Brown Button Foundation, a nonprofit organization that trains birth attendants in rural villages in Nigeria. The company has trained more than 8,000 birth attendants across the country who have also gone on to train others.

In 2013, she launched Mother’s Delivery Kit (MDK), a social enterprise that provides affordable sterile supplies for childbirth. So far, over 50,000 kits have been delivered.

Adepeju holds a degree in Law from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and a certificate in Global Change Leadership from the Coady International Institute in Canada. She also participated in the 2013 Global Change Leaders programme.

In 2014 she was selected to take part in the prestigious 2014 Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. In 2015, she was recognised as a “young innovator” at the World Innovation Summit for Health and in the same year, she was was one of five emerging entrepreneurs invited to pitch her idea at a White House event showcasing the impact of U.S. government initiatives and was honoured at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington DC.

LASUTH Performs Second Successful Kidney Transplant [2016]

The Chief Medical Director of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Professor Wale Oke, has announced that a successful kidney transplant was performed by a team of indigenous medical experts in the hospital.

This is the second time the medical feat was performed at the hospital. The hospital had in 2015 performed its first kidney transplant on a 56-year-old and a 26-year-old donor who was the patient’s nephew.

Professor Wale Oke, explained that the institution has perfected plans to make the feat a routine and the kidney transplant is a result of the state government’s determination to stem medical tourism.

According to him:

“Cases of 60 percent of patients seen on wheel chairs at international airport here in Lagos have to do with kidneys, and most of them go to India or the US for transplant. A lot of foreign exchange are also involved.

One thing unique about this exercise is that the experts were all Nigerians and from LASUTH apart from one.”

The elated Chief Medical Director, who explained that a total of two successful transplants were carried out at an affordable cost. He disclosed that the surgery costed about ₦4.5 million compare to ₦8 million charged elsewhere.

Warning that LASUTH would not accept commercial donors for organ transplant, he said right now the cost of the surgery covers cost of drugs for a period of six months.

In his words:

“What we are doing now is family donation. We are also looking at going into heart transplant. We encourage Nigerians to come to the hospital for their kidney transplant at an affordable cost.”

Speaking, the leader of the team, an Associate Professor of Medicine and Consultant Nephrologist, Dr. Olugbenga Awobusuyi said the team is not limiting its services to kidney transplant but expanding to heart and other organs transplant. He said the two transplants which lasted for about seven hours involved a 41 year-old man and the donor aged 42. Awobusuyi said the patients are recuperating in the ward and would be discharge by next week. He regretted that many transplant patients are on the waiting list for donors while those with ready donors have no money to perform the surgery.

FGN Unveils NHIS Driven Free Medical Surgeries and Tests [2016]

The Federal Government of Nigeria has unveiled a health intervention programme that would provide free surgeries to 10,000 poor and needy Nigerians registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

The programme, scheduled to commence on July 18 in 46 health facilities across Nigeria, will also extend free breast and cervical cancer tests to 18,000 Nigerians as well as free diabetes and hypertension tests to 500,000 others.

Continue reading FGN Unveils NHIS Driven Free Medical Surgeries and Tests [2016]

GSK Inventor Award

The Managing Director, Neimeth International Pharmaceuticals Plc, Dr Ebere Igboko Ekpunnobi has won the GSK Inventor Award for two patent applications covering her inventions related to discovering of compounds potentially useful for the treatment of a rare disease