Frontpage News (3256)
The House of Representatives has launched an investigation into alleged misappropriation of Global Fund’s grant of $1,349,087 between July and December 2013 by the workers of the Department of Health Planning, Research and Statistics (DPRS).
This is even as the lawmakers berated the management of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) for allowing drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS to expire in their stores before beneficiaries could access them.
African Health Ministers Urged to Unite Against Neglected Tropical Diseases
The Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Folorunso Adewole yesterday called on African Ministers of Health to unite against Neglected Tropical Disease, NTDs, by including them in their Health Agenda, and ensure that they are no longer neglected. 
There is tension in the Ekiti State civil service over the five month salary arrears owed workers. The workers are also aggrieved over government’s failure to pay last December deductions.
The Federal Government on Tuesday said the pest,Tuta absoluta,popularly known as ‘Tomato Ebola’, which is responsible for the massive destruction of tomato in farmlands, had invaded six states in Nigeria.
It also disclosed that Nigeria spent about N80bn ($400m) annually importing tomato paste, adding that many of the imported products were substandard.
The Eastern Naval Command on Monday took free medical services to the people of Ugep in Yakurr local government area of Cross River State as part of activities lined up to mark the Nigerian navy’s 60th anniversary. Some of the services offered include blood pressure test, diabetes screening, malaria treatment, deworming, health talk, eye screening as well as drug administration.
In his opening remark at the event, the flag officer commanding (FOC), Eastern Naval Command, Rear Admiral James Oluwole, said the event was aimed at boosting the Nigerian navy’s relationship with the civil populace.
Ethiopia’s foreign minister and previous health minister, Tedros Adhanom, has thrown his hat into the ring as Africa’s first and only candidate for the post of director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO).
A new U.N. health chief will be appointed during next year’s World Health Assembly.
Merck, a leading science and technology company, announced today that the largest single delivery of praziquantel tablets in the history of the Merck Praziquantel Donation Program recently arrived in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. The west African country has received around 34 million tablets for mass distribution to school children. With this, Merck has donated more tablets to a single country than it did to the entire continent in 2012 (27 million).
In response to the plight of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) across the country, the federal government has commenced a health insurance scheme targeted at ensuring that they get integrated into the larger society.
Speaking at the flag-off of the pilot scheme at Sabon Kuchingoro, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the acting Federal Commissioner of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced (NCFRMI), Margarette Essien, said 80 households of six persons each making up 480 persons will be captured in the first phase.
The Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal on Tuesday ordered Barewa Pharmaceutical Company to pay a fine of N1m for the sale of a contaminated baby teething mixture, My Pikin, which resulted in the death of a number of babies in the country.
In a lead judgment read by Justice E.C. Iyizoba, the Court of Appeal set aside the decision of a Federal High Court in Lagos, which on May 17, 2012 ordered the winding up of the company and the forfeiture of its assets.
Ogun State Government has uncovered 30 unlicensed nurses on its pay roll. The Director of Nursing in the state, Patience Odutayo, who made this known, said some of the nurses had been practising without valid licences.
The nurses, she said, were uncovered at a recent verification of nurses by the State Hospitals Management Board in Abeokuta.
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Workers Shut Down Health Ministry, Raise the Alarm over Corruption, Misconduct
There was pandemonium yesterday at the Federal Ministry of Health, Federal Secretariat, Abuja as workers in the ministry shut down the ministry, preventing the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole and other officials from gaining access to the building for over an hour.
The protesters also tackled the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Dr Amina Shamaki, whom they accused of corruption, highhandedness and gross misconduct since assuming office in the ministry.
The Ebola outbreak in Guinea is over, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday, the second time the West African nation has been declared free of the virus. It has been six weeks since the last confirmed Ebola patient tested negative for the virus, according to the WHO report.
The Director General of World Health Organization [WHO] , Dr. Margaret Chan, has warned the world of the transboundary nature of diseases and infections, saying ‘few threats to health are not local anymore”
The Founder and Chief Executive, Haemophilia Foundation of Nigeria (HFON), Mrs Megan Buckie Adediran, has disclosed that about 70 million Nigerians live with the blood disorder called haemophilia.
Adeniran made the disclosure yesterday when she paid a courtesy visit to the corporate headquarters of LEADERSHIP Group in Abuja.
