PositiveNaija, Author at PositiveNaija

West African Airline of the Year Award 2016

Arik Air wins the West African Airline of the Year award at the Ghana Aviation Awards 2016 held in Accra

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.

Agharese Emokpae

Agharese Emokpae aka A’rese Wins the Inaugural Edition of The Voice Nigeria

UNILORIN Wins 2016 All-Nigeria Universities Debating Championship (ANUDC)

The University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) has won the 2016 All-Nigeria Universities Debating Championship (ANUDC), beating 19 other universities that participated in the competition.

The University of Calabar came second while the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), took the third position.

The All-Nigeria Universities Debating Championship (ANUDC), which is the fourth in the series, took place at the Covenant University, Sango-Ota, Ogun State between July 9 and July 16, 2016.

Continue reading UNILORIN Wins 2016 All-Nigeria Universities Debating Championship (ANUDC)

Rio 2016 Olympics: Nigeria’s First Rower

American-born Cheirika Ukogu fondly called Coco is set to make history at the 2016 Rio Olympics by becoming the first rower to represent Nigeria

Nigerian AFIT Develops Bomb Detector Robot

The Nigerian Air force has invented two Unmanned Ground Vehicles and a Light Surveillance Aircraft developed by the Nigerian Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Kaduna, north-west Nigeria.

The bomb-detecting robot is capable of defusing Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The development is as part of the force’s contribution to the fight against insurgency in the troubled North-eastern region.

Commandant of the AFIT, Kaduna, Air Vice Marshal Toni Adokwe, made the disclosure at a gathering ahead of the institute’s 44th convocation ceremony.