Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, has emerged the overall winner of this year’s Entrepreneurship Action and Us, ENACTUS national competition held in Lagos.
The ABU team that participated in the ENACTUS tournament was led by Usman Suleiman Waziri and Paul Onaji, under the supervision of ABU ENACTUS Faculty Adviser, Professor MK Aliyu.
Eight (8) Nigerian states have been honored at the 3rd THISDAY Healthcare Policy Dialogue for the provision of basic health services to their people using the Saving One Million Lives Performance for Results (SOMLPforR) programme.
The 3rd THISDAY Healthcare Policy Dialogue held in Abuja focused on addressing issues around provision of healthcare to vulnerable Nigerians.
Continue reading 8 Nigerian States Honored At 3rd THISDAY Healthcare Policy Dialogue
60-year-old Dorcas Olayemi Amusan-Fagborun has been honored with the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) as a community heroine in Bradford community.
Dorcas Olayemi Amusan-Fagborun is the chief executive of Peacemakers International, which supports survivors of domestic violence and abuse.
She has lived in Bradford since 1991, with all her children educated in the city, and was nominated for her services to community cohesion and women and girls’ rights.
Mrs. Dorcas Olayemi Amusan-Fagborun has used her own personal hardship to inspire others and bring a voice to those who would otherwise be silent.
She is a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) and her experience has provided the basis for much of her campaigning, culminating in the formation of the Bradford-based Peacemakers International charity.
Across the past 40 years, Mrs. Olayemi Amusan-Fagborun has worked to champion the interests of African and ethnic minority communities in Bradford and beyond. Her influence is said to have been pivotal in Bradford becoming the UK’s second ‘City of FGM Zero Tolerance’.
In her words:
“I have a philosophy that nobody will come to me crying and go back crying. I cannot withstand injustice and it does not matter whom it happens to or who the perpetrator is. Seeing many people suffering unjustly, to me, is disheartening.
FGM is very difficult for survivors, and the community, to talk about. Survivors don’t want to talk about it because there is no specialist support.
The practising community is a big community in the UK, making it not easy to eradicate.
Many parents thought they could do it for their children secretly because of taboos attached to it. Many people still see it as an attack on their culture by the Western World.
[On the award], it’s good for the whole of the city, not just me as an individual.
I will continue to make sure that people I come across reach their full potential regardless of their race or ethnicity.”
Bradford’s community heroes who have dedicated their lives to helping others are among those recognised in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
The recipients form a diverse group consisting of people rewarded for their tireless charity and humanitarian work, their commitment to business, politics, and education, and their role in West Yorkshire’s emergency services.
The honors system recognises people who have made significant contributions to public life and excelled in serving and helping British society.
Others receiving the MBE honors in the list include:
Society for Family Physicians of Nigeria (SOFPON) and Sevenz Healthcare have launched KompleteCare – a mobile app aimed at reducing patient-waiting time in Nigerian hospitals. KompleteCare, can be accessed at the Google play store using a mobile phone.
Patients in public hospitals in the country spend an average of two hours before they are attended to by a doctor, according to a report.
KompleteCare app was unveiled to the public on May 18 at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital (UUTH), Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, by the Commissioner for Health in the state, Dominic Ukpong, to mark SOFPON’s celebration of the 2018 World Family Doctor’s Day.
SOFPON said the app provides a meeting-point online between doctors and patients where consultation, examination, and drug prescription can take place, and thereby help to reduce the crowd of patients at public hospitals.
Doctors across different parts of the country are welcome to register and use the app and get paid for their services, the group said during its unveiling.
According to SOFPON:
“You’ll have to fill in your MDCN number, it will be confirmed first before you are allowed to log in as a doctor. There’s a place for doctors, and there’s a place also for the patient. The app will direct a patient on the doctor to meet – let’s say a cardiologist.
In the future, the biggest hospital will be on your mobile phone.”
Nene Andem, a consultant family physician at the Emmanuel Hospital, Eket, Akwa Ibom State, and the President of SOFPON, Uyo Zone, stated:
“Doctors sometimes do consultation on phone, and they don’t get paid for this.
With this app, doctors will now be paid for every single consultation they do. If we can get people to key into the app, it will reduce patient-waiting time in the hospitals.”
Also, a doctor at the Department of Family Medicine, UUTH, Daniel Okeke during the 2018 World Family Doctor’s Day celebration stated:
“The common challenge most patients would want to talk about if you ask them, is the waiting time; spending too much time in the hospital.
They say if you go to most of the government-owned hospital, from the time they arrive, to when they have to pay to get their cards, waiting to get their card, waiting to pay money, waiting to see to see a nurse to take their vital signs – blood pressure, weight, temperature and all that – and waiting to see the doctor. You think that ends there! After waiting to see the doctor, you still have to wait again to get some drugs from the pharmacy. And if some investigations were ordered, you have to wait at the place where the results would be collected.
The thing in the mind of most Nigerian patients is that once you are going to a public hospital, you’ll have to clear your schedule for that day. You know when you are going, but you don’t know when you are coming back.”
The Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Yola, Adamawa State capital, with a team of surgeons led by the Chief Medical Director of the Centre, Professor Auwal Abubakar, successfully separate four-month-old conjoined female twins.
Professor Auwal, a Professor of Paediatric Surgery, said that the team of professionals that were deployed for the surgery included surgeons, anaesthetics, radiologists, laboratory scientists, preoperative nurses, and cleaners.
He stated on the separation of the four-month-old conjoined female twins (Mercy and Grace Aeiygbenmi):
“We have a successful separation of conjoined female twins (Omphilopagus). This development was recorded following a team work by different medical units.
The surgery was conducted on May 14, and the chances of survival of the twins are excellent.”
Professor Auwal said it took his team four hours to perform the operation – separating the four-month-old conjoined female twins, which was the second of its kind in the hospital.
What informed your interest in these kinds of cases?
These are very rare problems and any time they happen, they usually make the parents very anxious and agitated because of their very poor background. Some of them have few places where they could look for help and this is also a problem that tests the team work of the healthcare service.
So what do you need to do first?
In this kind of problem, you need to have good coordination in the different members of the team. All over the world, when you have conjoined twins, you will need to meet and assign roles and get the different parts of the teams to work together because if there is any problem of prolong surgery then you tend to have complications and as you know, there are many other successful separations in Nigeria so this is not the first time.
One other thing is interest and that interest has to be proper and total interest. You need to have the interest of the patient, his background, his problem because you need to keep them very close so that you monitor their growth and attend to health issue that may arise. With that, you will determine the chances of success which is usually higher. This helps the team to get accustom to them and members of the team will be able to fine tune their plans. These cases are not common so we are very privileged to have them.
How was this particular surgery done despite the fact that JOHESU was on strike as at that time?
The doctors were all working. We had the surgical team and the anesthetic team and those ones are basically doctors so they were around. For the theatre nurses, we actually have contract staffs who are retired nurses with vast experience and many of them were around. Some members of the striking workers even volunteered to join us and the lab was handled by lab scientists who are youth corps members and interns. We also had cleaners that didn’t join so they were part of us. We decided to do it because we didn’t want to lose time. The babies gained weight and their condition was optimal so we wanted to seize that time and thank God we did successfully.
How long did it take for you to prepare them for surgery?
Six weeks. They were here for six weeks. At that time, we did the investigation, the CT scan, ultra sound and other radiological investigations. This was to establish the organs involved and the extent of their conjoining. We were able to successfully bring that out clearly. It also gave us opportunity to meet several times. In fact we also took the babies to the theatre at different times to rehearse positioning, what we need to do, where we need to keep this and that, etc.
How do you get to identify the babies since they are identical?
That is why the rehearsing exercise is critical because you also have to identify the babies. In this case, one was called ‘Baby Red why the other one Baby Blue’. So we had color body for their drugs and everything and even the people handling them. If you look at the video, you see some red and blue. The baby on the left blue and the one on the right red. We also use R for red and B for blue. Because you don’t want to be confused. Drugs were calculated half for each of them because their combined weight was close to 12 kg so we give each of them drugs by 6 kg. This is very important because these are areas you can make mistakes. You can over dose because it’s combined wealth. You have to divide everything carefully including the IV fluids. Even the teams and everybody knew that he or she is for baby blue or red for easy identification so there was no waste of time when we went into the operation.
Each team already knew their roles and what to do. For the surgeons, we were together initially but when we finished the operation, we broke into two groups for the closure. I did closure with some of the team, and then Dr. Wabada did for the second baby with his team. After that they were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) and the recovery was very fast. We thought they will spend some days but after the second day they were [okay] and we just transferred them to the ward. The post operation recovery both anesthesia and surgery was very impressive beyond our expectation.
How many hours did the surgery take?
The surgery lasted for only four hours and we were done with everything.
Is there any medical risk that the babies may face as they grow?
Not at all. As far as we are concerned, they just need to continue with their immunizations. Otherwise, there is no risk at all from the surgery. They have normal function of any other organ so the risk is like any other normal baby.
How many people were involved in this surgery?
About 26 people. But I must say that everybody is important. We had cleaners, surgeons, anesthetists, ICU nurses. The number could be more but the main people are 26. Before the surgery we had people from the laboratory and radiology who helped in the investigation.
What do you call this type of conjoined twins?
This is omphalopagus. When you say omphalopagus is above the umbilical cord up to the lower chest. When it extends up the chest then is thoracopagus.
Would you like to disclose the total cost of this operation?
Well I don’t want to go into that. We didn’t even look at that. I felt these people needed help and the hospital took up the responsibility so we didn’t even look at that. Like I told you, they have been here for six weeks and now is more than three weeks post-surgery. It’s good to acknowledge the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Maiduguri and Adamawa German Medical Centre who did the CT scan free. We don’t have a CT scan here at the hospital. You can see they are still here.
Is medical tourism outside the country for this kind of cases necessary?
I think for most of them, people who may want to sponsor may also want to get some benefit from the travel because sometimes you see government or some organizations will want to take some responsibility. But like you know, there are many successful separations in the country. We have capable hands who will handle this. We may not have some of the highly technical gadgets but for the human resources we have them in abundance.
As a surgeon, what first comes to your mind when you take a knife to perform an operation?
The truth is, even in ordinary surgery, there is no surgery that a surgeon will want to do without his adrenaline going up. But with team, you are actually positive and looking forward to when they will be separated. For these babies, for most of the time they have been together but they cannot sleep on their backs until after they were separated and you could see the excitement even within the theatre. Everybody was happy. The joy was spontaneous especially that we broadcasted the operation live within the hospital for other people to watch. The thing with our country is for us to believe in ourselves and for us to equip our health institutions to the standard that we have like in other parts of the world. I believe if we give attention to health, we should be able to upgrade some centres – maybe at regional levels that we can find anywhere in the world. If you go to US and UK you find many top Nigerian professionals there.
What do you lack here at FMC Yola?
What we lack here is the modern imaging equipment machines. CT, MRI and other radiological equipment. You can see that in this case, we depended on other facilities to do CTs. We need to upgrade other areas like; theatre, lab, etc. we are doing well but we can do better.
Professor Fola Tayo has been appointed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to serve on its Cancer Medicine Advisory Group for the availability and affordability of cancer medicines.
Professor Fola Tayo, who is the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of Caleb University, Imota, Lagos, is among the 14 eminent people and the only West African appointed across the globe to serve on the group.
Mr. Elvis Otobo, the Head, Media and Public Relations Officer, Caleb University, said in a statement that the advisory group was made up of core professionals.
He noted that other members were from Australia, Canada, South Africa, Egypt, South Korea, Malaysia, Suriname, Malawi, Thailand, UK, Austria, Jordan and India.
Professor Fola Tayo has also been appointed to serve as the Protem Chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Private Universities in Nigeria.
Until his appointment, he has been a very active member of the committee and made many useful contributions to the growth and development of the body in particular, and Nigeria Universities in general.
WHO’s Cancer Medicine Advisory Group is set up to define the problems relating to availability and accessibility of cancer medicines and seek expert’s advice on the scope of the report, analytical feasibility and case studies.
It is also to seek expert advice on the benefits and consequences of various pricing approaches for cancer medicines, options for improving availability and affordability of cancer medicines.
The group will brainstorm on three key projects for three days when they meet in Switzerland according to an Agenda Review released by the WHO.
Ayodeji Olarinoye, a former medical doctor in the Nigerian U-17 football team, has been appointed as a FIFA Doping Control Officer (DCO) by the world soccer governing body, FIFA.
According to the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) in its weekly bulletin, the institution from which Ayodeji Olarinoye, graduated from, with this appointment, Ayodeji Olarinoye is Nigeria’s first FIFA doping control officer.
According to the publication, the 38-year-old is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine and British Association of Sports and Exercise Medicine.
The publication said the medical doctor would join the network of FIFA medical officers, responsible for ensuring safe and healthy participation in football after attending several anti-doping training.
“The 38-year-old Ayodeji is the son of a retired civil servant and former Head of the International Department of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) in the 1990s, Dr. Steve Olarinoye.
Dr. Olarinoye was honoured in 2015 by the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) for his dedication to duty and special interest in the field of Sports Medicine.
He is currently running a programme in Sports and Exercise Medicine in Cardiff, U.K.”