Vanguard, 22 March 2017
LUTH initiates suicide prevention service

Worried by the increasing spate of suicide in the country, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi Araba, has initiated a Suicide Prevention Service called the Suicide Research & Prevention Initiative and Staff Emotional Care Services, SURPIN/SECS. Disclosing this to Vanguard in a statement, Coordinator of the initiative, Dr. Raphael E. Ogbolu said the events of the past few days have further underscored the need to commence these services immediately. It would be recalled that on Sunday, a man committed suicide by jumping off the 3rd Mainland Bridge, while a woman was reported to have attempted suicide in another part of Lagos. Several incidents of suicide bomb attack incidents involving adults and children have been recorded in the Northeastern part of the country in recent times. Ogbolu, who is a specialist in Consultation-liaison Psychiatry/Emergency Psychiatry, said as a foremost health institution, LUTH developed the SURPIN/SECS programme and will be collaborating with all relevant agencies to enhance efforts to help save lives and prevent death by suicide both locally and nationally 

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The World Bank’s Board today approved a $200 million credit to support the Government of Nigeria’s response to the acute humanitarian and forced-displacement crisis triggered by the Boko Haram conflict in North East Nigeria. The project will provide multi-sectoral crisis recovery in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, including service delivery restoration and infrastructure rehabilitation in health, education, transport, water, and sanitation sectors. “Communities affected by the Boko Haram insurgency in the region are experiencing a particularly wide range of profound challenges,” said Rachid Benmessaoud, World Bank Country Director, Nigeria. “Their vulnerability is multidimensional, including severe damage to their social fabric, the extensive destruction of property and infrastructure, and significant basic survival and socio-economic needs that remain largely unmet. As such, responses should be multi-sectoral, offering avenues to self-reliance and following international standards on safe and voluntary return or reintegration.” The conflict has led to the loss of more than 20,000 lives, the displacement of two million people, and has negatively affected the livelihoods of six million more people. 

In an effort to protect millions of children from polio in Nigeria, the Japanese government yesterday announced a grant of $33.3 million in humanitarian emergency funding to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The grant came as a result of new cases popped up in areas affected by conflicts in the Borno State in Nigeria after the country has been declared "polio-free. The outbreak followed the large-scale movement of families coming from north-eastern Nigeria, an area inaccessible to health services. In response to the urgent need to rapidly raise immunity to polio virus in the region, Japan has provided exceptional funding from their supplementary budget envelope to purchase polio vaccines, conduct house-to-house polio campaigns and support communication efforts to mobilize communities for vaccination in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. National Governments in the region, in collaboration with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), comprising the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Rotary International, CDC and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), have implemented emergency vaccination campaigns throughout the region to rapidly raise childhood immunity to the polio virus and guard against further spread.  

An institute established more than 36 years ago to develop drugs, biological products and pharmaceutical raw materials from indigenous resources in Nigeria is presently hampered by lack of funds. Due to the paucity of funds, the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, NIPRD, located in the Idu Industrial Layout of Abuja, has been without electricity for over nine months since the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company cut off power supply over the failure of the institute to settle its debts. During visits to the institute by a PREMIUM TIMES reporter on Wednesday, the place was in darkness due to absence of electricity. Its Director General, Karyinus Gamaniel, said the lack of electricity was an evidence of the challenges facing the institute. He said although it needs electricity to operate, it has no fund to settle its electricity bills. “This institution has not had power supply for over nine months. Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) packed up the power connections of the institution since early part of 2016.” The professor of pharmacology explained that in the past few months, the institute has tried to improvise with a generator. “We did a kind of rationalization for the past two months in which by 10 a.m. the generator supplies power for few hours. Prior to this, no power supply in the institution”, he said. The Director-General added that 95 per cent of the challenges of the institution is due to underfunding as overhead expenses are hardly met. 

The Senate yesterday resolved to constitute an ad hoc committee to investigate allegations of mismanagement and scam amounting to N860 million by the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf. The resolution followed a motion sponsored by Senator Kabir Garba Marafa (Zamfara Central), who expressed concern at what he called the scandalous activities of the ES/CEO, since his appointment. Yusuf is also being alleged to have carried out illegal and lopsided appointments into the agency without recourse to due process. “Further aware that the Executive Secretary has a spending limit of only N2.5 million; aware that any spending above his threshold must either be referred to the board or his supervising ministry; aware of the corrupt expenditure of N292 million singlehandedly incurred by the Executive Secretary for Health Care Financing Training without recourse to any appropriate approving authority,” Marafa said. The senator also alleged that Yusuf expended N118 million on training of staff without recourse to approving authority, and executed another expenditure of N400 million again for staff training in October 2016. 

As part of efforts to boost the health sector, Nigeria has partnered with The Dubai Healthcare Authority (DHA) to ensure Nigerians get quality services in the country. The partnership would see medical expertise from Dubai come to Nigeria to render their services, thereby lessen the burden of Nigerians moving abroad for treatment. Director Medical Tourism Council, Dubai, Dr. Layla Mohamed Al Marzouqi, said that the partnership entails exchange of knowledge and experience and it is of mutual benefit for both countries. Al Marzouqi revealed that the Nigerian government is dedicated in facilitating the road show as they have already discussed with the Military and Police hospitals to exchange expertise in terms of neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and also coming from Dubai to do operations for patients, who the hospitals have arranged and then the complicated cases, will be taken back to Dubai for treatment. She added: “We are to strengthen the partnership and develop more collaboration, it is a win- win end situation for both of us, the Brian, the expert, in the terms of operations we do. We are not competing with anyone we are just unique in services we provide and also outstanding. We get easy connection with Nigeria, its quite closer. 

Tuberculosis today, remains a serious public health problem in most parts of the world causing deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year, mostly in developing countries. According to the 2016 WHO Global TB report, there were an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwide in 2015, of which 5.9 million (56%) were among men, 3.5 million (34%) among women and 1.0 million (10%) among children. Our dear country, Nigeria, is among the six countries that accounted for 60% of the new cases globally. Nigeria ranks 4th among the 30 high TB burden countries globally and it is number one in Africa. Unfortunately, the burden of the disease in Nigeria is further made worse by the negative effects of the interactions between TB and HIV. TB is the most common life-threatening disease and the number one killer among People Living with HIV (PLHIV). Furthermore, the emergence of drug resistant TB currently impacts negatively on TB control efforts in the country. This administration through the Federal Ministry of Health and in collaboration with Partners has taken some bold steps to control TB in Nigeria. Some of these steps are as follows: · We introduced the use of the GeneXpert MTB/RIF technology as the primary diagnostic tool for TB among all presumptive TB cases in the country including PLWHA.

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