Lassa Outbreak in Nigeria..Months and counting

Medic-ALL (01-25-2016) DISEASE

by Kayode Kuku

Just less than 2 years after the Ebola virus hit the Nigeria and other countries in the West African region, Lassa fever, another viral hemorrhagic fever, with similar symptoms as Ebola broke out in the country.

Lassa fever is an acute viral illness first discovered in Nigeria in 1969 when 2 missionary nurses died from the disease. The virus was subsequently named after the town in Borno State, Nigeria where the first cases occurred. The virus belongs to the virus family, Arenaviridae, a single stranded RNA virus which is animal borne and usually associated with rodent transmitted diseases in humans.

It is endemic in parts of West Africa including Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia and Nigeria notably but the risk is spread throughout the region where the disease vector, the multimammate rat (Mastomys Natalensis) is distributed.

Lassa virus is transmitted to humans by contact with excreta or urine of infected rats.

Lassa virus is transmitted to humans by contact with food or household items which have been contaminated with excreta or urine of infected rats. Since the disease is endemic in rodent population, it tends to affect communities with poor sanitation and crowded living conditions the most. Hence it is sometimes referred to as a "disease of the poor".

The present outbreak of Lassa Fever broke out in Nigeria, August 2015 and reports show that it has claimed up to 63 lives as at the January, 24, 2016  out of over 200 suspected cases spread across 17 states in the country including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Nigeria's Health Minister, Professor Isaac Adewole, stated that 212 suspected cases have been reported in the last 3 months.

While the world's most populous black nation was praised for its prompt containment of Ebola in 2014, things appear a little more complicated in the case of Lassa , as many stakeholders including specialists have raised concerns ranging from ignorance of the disease among the vulnerable communities, leading to under-reporting of the cases and under-mining the scale of the outbreak  , and even the capacity of the country's healthcare system to deal with the outbreak at this time.

These are valid concerns, considering the "skeletal" state of the country's primary health care system and the lack of access to adequate health care in the vulnerable regions. The country reported 112 deaths and over 1700 cases of Lassa fever in 2012, yet in a population of over 170 million people, there is only one research center in the country to cater for Lassa fever research.

As far as comparison with Ebola goes, Lassa fever is not necessarily as deadly, but it spreads faster.

Meanwhile, while Lassa fever has exposed the level of preparedness of the nation's health care system to cope with such outbreaks, the WHO and US CDC are working with Nigeria Health Ministry in containing the outbreak.

Medic-All Inc. 2016

Refs: CDC, Punch Nigeria

Nigeria Kicks Out Polio!

Medic-ALL(09:28:2015) GLOBAL HEALTH

In what has been described as a historical achievement for global health by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Nigeria was last Friday declared free of Polio by the World Health organization and subsequently removed from the Polio-Endemic List, leaving Pakistan and Afghanistan as the two countries in the world that have never been free of the disease. (Read Polio: The "PAN" and the"PAIN").

Nigeria has not reported a case of wild poliovirus since 24 July 2014, and all laboratory data have confirmed a full 12 months have passed without any new cases. Health officials have described this as a major victory in the fight to rid the world of polio. The World Health Organization records show that as recently as 2012, Nigeria accounted for more than half of all polio cases worldwide.

Since then however , there appeared to be collaborative effort by all levels of government, civil society, religious leaders and tens of thousands of dedicated health workers which resulted in one of the world's most populous nations successfully stopping the disease. More than 200 000 volunteers across the country repeatedly immunized more than 45 million children under the age of 5 years, to ensure that no child would suffer from this paralysing disease. Innovative approaches, such as increased community involvement and the establishment of Emergency Operations Centres at the national and state level, have also been pivotal to Nigeria’s success.

In a statement by Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa “Stopping polio in Nigeria has been a clear example that political engagement, strong partnerships and community engagement are the engines that drive the momentum of public health programmes, enabling them to achieve great things. I would like to congratulate everyone, particularly political, religious and community leaders in Nigeria and across Africa, for reaching a year without cases of wild polio.”

Certainly the victory over Polio in Nigeria would not have been possible without the support and commitment of donors and development partners. Such continued support, along with continued domestic funding from Nigeria, will be essential to keep Nigeria and the entire region polio-free, keeping in mind the vulnerable nations in the region( See Polio:The "PAN" and the "PAIN").

The World Health Organization, through her Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan praised the commitments and efforts that got Nigeria off the Polio-Endemic list whilst reiterating the need for supportive efforts to be rendered to Pakistan and Afghanistan.


Eradicating polio will be one of the greatest achievements in human history, and have a positive impact on global health for generations to come. Nigeria has brought the world one major step closer to achieving this goal and it’s critical that the world seizes this opportunity to end polio for good and ensure future generations of children all over the world are free from this devastating disease.

Source: WHO Media Centre

See Also  Polio:The "PAN" and the "PAIN"

Medic-ALL.Inc 2015

POLIO; The "PAN' and the "PAIN

Medic-ALL (09:01:2015) DISEASES

Just a few years ago “P-A-I-N’ was the acronym popularly used among medical students to recall the countries where Polio was endemic, but that changed a couple of years ago when the “I” which referred to the nation with the 2^nd largest population in the world, India, left the likes of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria (P-A-N) on the list of countries that have never stopped Polio.

                              Nigeria aims to follow in the footsteps of India through increased government 

                              commitment and stakeholders support. Source: Global Polio Eradication Initiative website

It had been a much-anticipated moment as the World Health Organization notified the national authorities in India on 25 February 2012 that the country was officially removed from the list of countries with active transmission of endemic polio. This came weeks after India marked 12 months in which no Indian child had been paralyzed by polio. India has not seen a case since a 2-year-old girl in the state of West Bengal developed paralysis on 13 January 2011.

It is interesting to note that, as recent as 2009, India had the highest burden of polio cases in the world (741), more than the three other endemic countries combined. But the government resorted to extraordinary measures to reach children with the vaccine so much that the Polio eradication efforts became a most widely-recognized brand in India, with a Bollywood megastar as its public face.

Polio remains endemic in three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, all countries remain at risk of importation of polio, especially vulnerable countries.......CONTINUE READING HERE

Medic-ALL. Inc 2015

Nigeria Declared Ebola-Free by WHO

Medic-ALL (20:10:2014) by Kayode Kuku

With no new cases of Ebola reported in Nigeria over the last 42 days, the World Health Organization (WHO) today declared the country "Ebola Free", a sign of how the deadly virus could have been easily contained had the other West African countries ravaged by the disease acted swiftly.

There haven’t been any cases of Ebola in 42 days, said WHO Country Representative Rui Gama Vaz in a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

“The last chain of transmission has been broken. The disease is gone,” said Dr. Vaz. “This is a spectacular story, that Ebola can be defeated.”

This is following an announcement that Senegal is also rid of the virus.

The entire world and health officials particularly were concerned of a possible worldwide outbreak  and wary of the spread throughout the world when a Liberian-American "transported" the virus into Nigeria when he flew into Lagos, the Country's most populous city with a population of about 21 million people late July.

A different story has been unfolding in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, whose governments didn’t notice Ebola had arrived in their interiors until March, four months after the disease first erupted in rural Guinea late last year.

More than 4,500 people are known to have died from the disease in those countries, the WHO says. Thousands more are thought to have contracted it without ever being tallied in the United Nations health agency’s records.

Meanwhile the United States continue to put in place measures to ensure the diseses which has so far been confirmed in 3 persons in the U.S. 43 contacts of the country's first Ebola case, Thomas Eric Duncan have been cleared after not developing any symptoms following a 21-day period in quarantine, while 4 others are close to the end of the isolation period.

 Reports from Spain, reveal that the nurse's aide has also beaten Ebola after spending weeks hospitalized with the disease.

Ref : Wall Street Journal

Related posts: Yes!! Nigeria, Ebola Free

Ebola In America: Nigerian Flight raises Fears

Medic-ALL (17:10:2014)

A man died on a plane from Nigeria landing at Kennedy Airport in Queens early Thursday, sparking fears that the deadly Ebola virus had finally touched down in New York, sources said.

Unnamed man aboard an Arik Air flight from Lagos, Nigeria, died an hour before the plane landed at Kennedy Airport

.

Centers for Disease Control and Health Department members in protective gear swarmed the Arik Air flight landing at JFK’s Terminal 4 after the 63-year-old man, a U.S. citizen, died on the plane about an hour before landing at 5:45 a.m.

The Arik air plane had departed from Lagos, officials said.

The man, who was traveling alone, was vomiting profusely and complaining of chest pains before he died of an apparent heart attack, a Port Authority source said.

Passengers were held on the plane for about 45 minutes after arrival as CDC officials determined that the dead passenger didn’t have the disease that’s infected more than 7,500 people in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and has recently surfaced in Dallas.

The United States has recently been hit by the deadly Ebola virus that has ravaged parts of West Africa in the past months with three cases diagnosed on U.S soil and five others infected in the West Aftrican outbreak treated in the U.S.

About  3400 people have died from the outbreak as the world continues to fear a pandemic.

Ref: DailyNews, New York

Ebola: Containing The Spread...How Feasible?

Medic-ALL (13:10:2014) by Kayode Kuku

Nearly 3 months ago, the news of a Liberian-American infected with the Ebola virus entering into Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria filled the air and the spotlight was on the African continent, particularly the West African countries; Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia that had been ravaged by the outbreak of the  deadly disease many months before one of Africa's biggest economies was hit by the news of the "immigrant" index patient ; a remarkable 38 years after the first recorded outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976.

Fears were raised at the time as to the the likelihood of the virus to spread to other parts of the world as many believed the alarming spread in the lesser developed West African countries may have been due to sub-standard level of their healthcare systems. 

HOW MUCH ATTENTION AND ASSISTANCE DID THIS COUNTRIES REALLY GET FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY before the Nigeria incident was reported late July?

In a Medic-ALL blog post titled "Ebola; Will it Keep Spreading" at the outset of the now aborted outbreak in Nigeria, it was reported that Public health experts expect the virus to reach other parts of the world including the United States but unlikely to spread in regions with well-funded hospitals and standard infection-control procedures. Barely months later and the news of the first case diagnosed in the United States and then another case of an infected healthworker in Spain were reported, raising worldwide fears of a pandemic if more austere measures are not in place to contain the virus and its spread from continent to continent. ARE WE REALLY WINNING ?

More disturbing news emanated yesterday, with the United States confirming a second case involving a female nurse at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital infected as a result of an unknown breech in hospital Protocol and was confirmed positive for the virus on Sunday afternoon according to the CDC. She is said to have attended to Duncan (the first U.S patient) after his second visit to the emergency room on September 28 and followed all CDC precautions including wearing of masks ,gowns, gloves and protective face shield. The CDC's Thomas Frieden in a statement outlined several steps taken to care for the health worker and prevent the infection of others, he however said more cases of the deadly virus may be likely.

There is no doubt that we are dealing with a highly transmissible and truly lethal disease that deserves worldwide attention. The question of whether the virus will "Keep spreading" seems to be getting answered on a daily basis and the staggering figures of the lives that have been claimed so far, particularly in the West African region is enough to put the whole world on our toes.

Containing the spread of the virus in countries with reported cases is most paramount at this stage and it is obvious that this will require not just a "well-funded healthcare system" but a step up in our standard infection-control procedures worldwide, as Frieden highlighted that taking off protective equipment- gowns, gloves, face masks and goggles is one of the greatest areas of contamination and risk. Certainly there is need for a new note of urgency to this outbreak , this cannot be over-emphasized.

Medic-ALL.Inc 2014 

CONTAINING EBOLA: Learning From Nigeria

Medic-ALL (05:10:2014) 

Ref: Washingtonpost

After several months of the Ebola outbreak and devastating reports streaming out of West Africa where the deadly virus has overwhelmed already weak public health systems and left thousands of people dead, anxiety has begun to grip in the United States over the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the country, one West African nation serves as an example of hope: Nigeria, which appears to have successfully contained  the Ebola virus, with no new case reported in the country since the 31st of August 2014.

As concerns spread over the readiness of U.S. hospitals , there are some lessons to be learned from Nigeria, where officials managed to get ahead of the fast-moving virus after it was brought into Africa's most populous country by an Ebola-infected Liberian-American man who had flown into Lagos from Liberia for an ECOWAS meeting.

As in the U.S. case, Ebola arrived in Nigeria by passenger plane. But unlike Thomas Eric Duncan — who arrived in Dallas before he became symptomatic and was therefore not contagious during his flights from Liberia to Texas through Brussels and Dulles International Airport — Patrick Sawyer was already symptomatic when he landed in Lagos on July 20. At that point, Sawyer, Nigeria's Patient Zero, was contagious and dying.

It was a nightmare scenario with the potential to spiral out of control, given the bustling city of Lagos, Africa's largest, is a major transportation hub. As Sawyer was placed in isolation, public health officials had to track down every single person who'd come into contact with him, from the flights he'd boarded to the Lagos airport and the private hospital where he went after landing. And they had to do so quickly, making the process known as contact tracing a priority.

"In the whole system approach in beating the war on Ebola, contact tracing is the key public health activity that needs to be done," said Gavin MacGregor-Skinner, who helped with the Ebola response in Nigeria with the Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation. "The key is to find all the people that patient had direct close contact with."

From that single patient came a list of 281 people, MacGregor-Skinner said. Every one of those individuals had to provide health authorities twice-a-day updates about their well-being, often through methods like text-messaging. Anyone who didn't feel well or failed to respond was checked on, either through a neighborhood network or health workers.

Nigeria is said to have taken a "whole community approach," with everyone from military officials to church elders in the same room, discussing how to handle the response to the virus.

Such an approach, and contact tracing in general, requires people be open and forthright about their movements and their health, he said. Stigmatization of patients, their families and contacts could only discourage that, so Nigerian officials sent a message to "really make them look like heroes," MacGregor-Skinner said.

"This is the best thing people can do for Nigeria: They are going to protect and save Nigeria by being honest, by doing what they need to do, by reporting to the health commission," he said. This made people feel like they were a part of something extremely important, he said, and also took into account real community needs. "You got real engagement and compliance from the contacts. They're not running and hiding."

In Nigeria, Sawyer had come into contact with someone who ended up in Port Harcourt, Rivers State That person, a regional official, went to a doctor who ended up dying from Ebola in August. Within a week, 70 people were being monitored. It ballooned to an additional 400 people in that one city.

Success stories of people coming through strict Ebola surveillance alive and healthyhelped encourage more people to come forward, as they recognized that ending up in a contact tracer's sights didn't mean a death sentence.

In the end, contact tracers — trained professionals and volunteers — conducted 18,500 face-to-face visits to assess potential symptoms, according to the CDC, and the list of contacts throughout the country grew to 894. Two months later, Nigeria ended up with a total of 20 confirmed or probable cases and eight deaths.

The CDC also pointed to the robust public health response by Nigerian officials, who have had experience with massive public health crises in the past — namely polio in 2012 and large-scale lead poisoning in 2010.

When someone is on a contact list, thatdoesn't mean that person has to stay at home for the entire incubation period of 21 days from the last contact with someone who had Ebola. People on contact lists are not under quarantine or in isolation. They can still go to work and go on with their their lives. But they should take their temperature twice a day for 21 days and check in with health workers.

Officials in Texas began with a list of about 100 names; they have whittled the list down to 50 people who had some contact with Duncan. Of those, 10 are considered high-risk.

The CDC recommends that people without symptoms but who have had direct contact with the bodily fluids of a person sick with Ebola be put under either conditional release, meaning that they self-monitor their health and temperature and check in daily, or controlled movement. People under controlled movement have to notify officials about any intended travel and shouldn't use commercial planes or trains. Local public transportation use is approved on a case-by-case basis.

When symptoms do develop, that's when the response kicks into high gear. People with Ebola are contagious only once they begin exhibiting symptoms, which include fever, severe headaches and vomiting.

While four people in Dallas are under government-ordered quarantine, that is not the norm. Those individuals "were non-compliant with the request to stay home. I don’t want to go too far beyond that," Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said Thursday.On Friday, the four people were moved to a private residence from the apartment where Duncan had been staying when he became symptomatic.

A law enforcement officer will remain with them to enforce the order, and none of the people are allowed to leave until Oct. 19.

Duncan is the only person with an Ebola diagnosis in Dallas, and no one else is showing symptoms at the moment. But, as Nigeria knows, the work in Dallas has just begun.

Washingtonpost article by Elahe Izadi

Journal: Nigerian Medical Students; Underappreciated and Underutilized Research Resource

By Rober. H. Glew (Highland Medical Research Journal) 
Having taught biochemistry to medical students in the U.S and Nigeria for three decades, I have been fascinated by the many contrasts that differentiate the education and training these students receive in the two countries. One of the most glaring and interesting distinctions between undergraduate medical education in the U.S. and Nigeria has to do with the extent or lack thereof to which Nigerian and American medical students become engaged in biomedical research while they are in medical school. The percentage of medical students in the U.S. who are involved to a significant degree in research certainly varies considerably across the 140 or so allopathic and osteopathic schools of medicine. 

Nevertheless, regardless of whether research is a required or voluntary activity, at most U.S. medical schools at least one-third and as many as one hundred percent of the student body participates significantly in research of one sort or another, be it epidemiology/population-based or laboratory-centered. At the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, for example, even before the requirement that students do a research project was put in place about 12 years ago, 30-40% of the medical students elected to engage in research under the tutelage of a faculty research mentor in one of the clinical or basic science departments. 

In contrast, however, based on what I have observed first-hand from having taught medical students and done research at a number of teaching hospitals in different regions of Nigeria over the past 30 years, I cannot recall a single instance in which a Nigerian medical student ever involved himself or herself in a collaborative research project with a faculty member in any serious manner during the six years they were in training.

Continue Journal Article HERE

Ebola: Sierra Leone Quarantines A Million People

The Guardian (25:09:2014)

Sierra Leone’s government has quarantined more than a million people in an attempt to bring an end to the spread of the deadlyEbola virus.

Areas in the east of the country on the border of Guinea have been under quarantine for months but travel is now restricted in three more areas where an estimated 1.5 million people live. Nearly a third of the country’s population across 14 districts is now under curfew.

The move comes as world leaders meet to discuss the crisis at the United Nations, and days after a three-day nationwide lockdown ended.

Healthworker being disinfectted after helping out with a suspected case of Ebola on Freetown, Sierra Leone

In an address to the nation, Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma, said the weekend’s lockdown had “met its objectives” but had also exposed the challenges posed by the Ebola crisis.

In addition to announcing the new isolation districts, the government is establishing corridors for travel between non-quarantined districts, with a curfew on all travel outside the hours of 9am and 5pm. Koroma said the isolation would “definitely pose great difficulties for our people in these districts”.

The British charity Street Child said there had been no warning given of the latest lockdown and said it was concerned that this would lead to mass starvation. “We were not prepare for the quarantine overnight. The areas being quarantined are really poor communities, most people live on 50p a day,” its country director, Kelfa Kargbo, told the Guardian.

“We need more help from the World Food Programme, but more than that we need a distribution network to be built to make sure the food gets in and gets in regularly to the starving people. I am expecting starvation to show in three or four weeks unless this is addressed.”

The northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali have been closed off indefinitely along with the southern district of Moyamba, effectively sealing in around 1.2 million people.

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected more than 6,200 people in westAfrica and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organisation’s latest figures.

The virus is spread through bodily fluids and once symptomatic can kill within four or five days. Symptoms include rampant fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in some cases, internal and external bleeding through the eyes and mouth.

World leaders are due to attend a meeting on Ebola convened by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, in New York later on Thursday, with Koroma and Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf connected by video link.

The meeting, part of the UN general assembly, will hear from Barack Obama, and world leaders are expected to pledge help for attempts to contain the spread of the virus.

Obama, who is sending 3,000 troops to west Africa to help health workers, urged other countries to get behind a broader international effort.

In a speech to the general assembly, Obama grouped Ebola with the crisis in Ukraine and the threat posed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as new dangers to global security.

“As we speak, America is deploying our doctors and scientists – supported by our military – to help contain the outbreak of Ebola and pursue new treatments,” Obama told the assembly. “But we need a broader effort to stop a disease that could kill hundreds of thousands, inflict horrific suffering, destabilise economies and move rapidly across borders.”

Door-to-door searches during the three-day curfew in Sierra Leone identified more than 350 suspected new cases of Ebola, according by the top US diplomat in the country. Charge d’affairs Kathleen Fitzgibbon said teams of volunteers had also discovered 265 corpses, of which 216 had since been buried.

In an email to emergency workers, she said one of the priorities was to ensure all bodies were buried correctly, as funerals have been identified as one of the ways the disease has spread, with relatives touching the bodies of the deceased.

The US Centres for Disease Control estimated that the number of cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could rise to 1.4 million by January, in a worst-case scenario based on data obtained before the world ramped up its response.

Yes! Nigeria Free of Ebola

Medic-ALL (24:09:2014)

Exactly 2 months ago, after Nigeria was hit by the news of a "mystery" Ebola virus disease patient , a naturalized American and  Liberian Ministry of Finance official; Patrick Sawyer, who found his way into the country via the Murtala Mohammed International airport in Lagos to attend a meeting of the Economic Commission for West African States  (ECOWAS) in the city of Calabar. The Minister of Health, Dr. Onyebuchi Chukwu declared yesterday that there is presently no single case of the Ebola virus disease in the country. Stating that there are no cases of the disease under treatment nor any suspected cases. He added that there are no contacts under surveillance having being under observation for at least 21 days.

Prof. C. O. Onyebuchi Chukwu, Honourable Minister of Health, Federal Republic of Nigeria

About 400 contacts from the Southern part of the country in Rivers State, Port Harcourt had earlier being on medical surveillance, with 25 of them remaining as at Monday the 22nd of September and none showing symptoms, they were scheduled for discharge on the Tuesday. Indeed it appears the disease has being successfully contained in Lagos , a city of 21 million people and Prt Harcourt which has a population of 1.4 million people.

Nigeria, which is the most populous black nation in the world , with about 177 million people suffered a total of 21 Ebola cases and 8 deaths, this is in contrast to Liberia with a population of  4.3 million and had suffered 1,459 deaths out of 2,710 reported cases as at last Friday. This is truly a remarkable achievement for a country plagued by relative insecurity and pervasive and chronic corruption. A rare signal that things can indeed go right in some parts of Africa.

The Ebola survivors in Nigeria were not treated with any experimental drugs. Contact tracing and early identification of cases were managed by isolating patients and replacing fluids and electrolytes, while some were transfused.

The Nigerian Health Minister was full of praises for the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General, Margaret Chan MD, who assisted the country by sending experienced physicians to the country to help manage the cases. Other organizations which helped in the fight against the deadly virus in the West African country include, UNICEF, CDC and MSF.

IVF in Nigeria: Nordica's First Baby Turns 10

Medic-ALL(11:09:2014):

One of Nigeria's Leading Fertility Clinics, who specialize in assisted reproductive services, including In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) , Nordica Fertility Centre , yesterday the 10th of September 2014 celebrated the 10th Birthday of her first IVF baby, a boy, Julian.

Julian's parents were said to have walked into the Fertility Centre on the 11th of October 2003 and following a single treatment cycle, four months later were greeted with the news of the mother being pregnant with a male child.

               Julian & Dr Abayomi Ajayi(MD/CEO Nordica Fertility Centre

The Centre first opened on the 14th of April, 2003 at Victoria Garden City, Lekki Lagos. But later moved to the Ikoyi area of Lagos in a bid to be closer to their clients and a desire to expand. They have since followed with a branch in the Mainland area of Lagos which was opened in 2003 as well as a Clinic in Asaba, Delta State, in the Southern part of the country five years ago. The Center in Sapporo, Abuja, the capital of Nigeria was commissioned in November 2012.

In a statement by the center while marking the landmark event, it stated that the story of Nordica Fertility Centre has been one with a number of “firsts”, some of which include:

1. The first IVF clinic to have a baby from Laser assisted hatching

2. The first and probably the only IVF centre to use/using IMSI to solve male related infertility issues.

3. The first IVF Clinic in Nigeria to start Oocyte cryopreservation, otherwise known as Egg freezing.

4. The first solely dedicated IVF centre in Abuja.

5. We are also one of the few clinics in Nigeria to do Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis

6. The first to utilise acupuncture for IVF treatment

The statement also said that whilst they had achieved monumental growth in the number of babies conceived, The centre had equally not neglected it's corporate social responsibility. Working in conjunction with the Fertility Treatment Support Foundation (FTSF), free fertility treatments have been made available to over 30 couples with diverse infertility challenges. "We also work with the ESGN (Endometriosis Support Group Nigeria) the only Foundation supporting this cause in West Africa" it said .

The lack of information about fertility options coupled with the stigmatisation associated with childlessness has contributed to the reason why a lot of people do not explore the possibility of assisted conception. This should not be seen as a taboo but seen as a means to an end.

The center continues to strive to Keep Hopes alive by "Completing Families".

Ref: Nordica Fertility Center blog

Ebola: Nigerian Scholar suggests Ewedu Cure

Medic-ALL (05:09:2014):

Corchorus

A Professor of Ophthalmology at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Lagos, Nigeria, Professor Adebukola Adefule Oshitelu, has laid claims that ‘Genus Corchorus’ popularly known as Ewedu in Nigeria is capable of curing the  deadly Ebola Virus Disease.

She made  this statement at the 2014 African Traditional Medicine organised by NAFDAC (National Agency  for Food and Drug Administration and Control) yesterday at Ikeja, Lagos state. The programme which was arranged for Traditional Medicine Practitioners and Conventional Medicine Practitioners was in response to the  urgent need for cooperation between the two health bodies in order to enhance better and reliable healthcare delivery system.

According to Oshitelu, Ewedu cures Ebola by improving an infected person’s immune system, likewise providing prevention against the deadly virus .for uninfected persons.

“The qualities inside Ewedu is so much that it will kill Ebola by preventing the virus from replicating and destroying more organs in the body. This would immediately stop the symptoms such as high fever, stooling and vomiting. Ultimately, leading to the cure,” Oshitelu said.

She further advised people to consume Ewedu on a regular basis but with strict adherence to its preparation and usage.

The way it will be prepared will be different from the normal way they cook it. It should be washed and rinsed with liquid vinegar, afterwards blend and cook with drinkable water. No salt, potash or seasoning should be added, take 25cl of the concoction a week and it would boost a person’s immunity so that they become impregnable to the virus.” Oshitelu said.

However, In a statement made by the Director General of NAFDAC, Paul Orhii who was represented by the Director of Laboratory Service, Stella Denloye, NAFDAC said it has banned illegal advertisement of herbal products and bogus claims of cure for diseases.

“Unpatriotic Nigerians who continue to engage in illegal advert of their products and those making false claims not evaluated by NAFDAC should desist from acts misleading the unsuspecting public. I want to warn and inform them that NAFDAC would deal decisively with anyone found to contravene,” Orhii said.

He noted that there was the need to institutionalise traditional medicine in the health systems worldwide including Nigeria.

He said the stigmatising of the traditional health care by modern/conventional medicine needed to stop. So much that in some countries, it is even illegal to practice it.

“Regulation is the key to ensuring that only good quality, safe and effective traditional/herbal medicines are available to consumers especially if traditional medicine and complementary medicine is to be integrated into the nation’s healthcare system,” Orhii said.