Owerri Now World's Dirtiest City

The capital of Imo State, Owerri, was noted for its well paved roads and clean streets. But that is now in the past as heaps of refuse has thrown the city into one of the dirtiest around. STEVE UZOECHI writes from Owerri

Under the administration of the late former Governor of Imo State, Chief Sam Mbakwe, Imo State was adjudged the cleanest state in Nigeria. Owerri, the state capital earned the state that status. But present realities in the heartland state of Imo, leaves so much to be desired. Under the circumstance, if no decisive action is taken by relevant authorities in Imo State, Owerri the state capital, may soon find its way into the Guiness Book of World Records, as the city in the world harbouring the largest heap of refuse found in one street.
What started as small pockets of refuse soon became piles of slimy dirt and today is aggressively growing into a mountain of garbage at different parts of the city. As repugnant as the sight is to the eyes and as putrid as its stench is to the nose, the Imo State government has yet, found no compulsion to evacuate the refuse.
Old Owerri city centre is made up of five major roads: Wetheral road, Douglas road, Tetlow road, Royce road and the Okigwe road that goes all the way up to Assumpta road. The busiest of all the roads and of greatest strategic economic importance is the Douglas road, which leads to the largest market in the Imo State capital, Ekeukwu Owerri Main Market.
Douglas road runs a straight course to Bank road, making it easy for traders and business men to drive straight or enter just one short drop to the bank to lodge their trade dividends. In spite of the key roles of that road and the fact that the road and Douglas House, the Imo seat of power, derive their names from the same source, the road has suffered gradually and systematic neglect from the present administration leading to massive degradation and dilapidation of the short stretch called Douglas Road.
Pot holes and dirty puddles,which have been left unattended to by the government have degenerated into near gullies at sensitive sections of the road. Despite the outcries of traders and indigenes of the area, nothing substantial has been done to ameliorate the plight of traders and road users. In recent times however, the complaints over bad road and flood-sensitive state of Douglas road paled into insignificance with the seeming invasion of the road by garbage.
Before now, the pattern was for the traders and residents of adjoining streets to bag their disposables and dump them at select locations on Douglas road for pick-up by sanitation workers the next day. This was the case until recently when the efforts of the refuse disposal outfit started going slack.
Their pick-up frequency reduced and became irregular to the point that small bags of refuse were seen ‘on parade’ from one end of Douglas road to the other. Today, there is clearly no more pick-up runs of the refuse disposal unit with about 70 per cent of Douglas road now covered with refuse and still rising.
Beyond the negative economic impacts on the market and residents, there is also the looming threat of epidemic outbreak in Owerri, following the size and stench of the now completely fetid mound of rubbish along Douglas road, which is dangerously in close proximity to business offices and residential homes. For more than one week now, the massive dump site called Douglas Road has put Owerri in the map of regions of the world under serious threat of an epidemic.
Yet, the implications of that reality and its consequences on the life of Imo residents seem not to worry the state government in the least. This is more worrisome when the State Commissioner for Health, who should have since raised a red flag and called the attention of the Governor to such life-threatening issue that runs deeper than politics, is a lawyer and not in any way a health worker.
When contacted, Hon. Jeff Nwoha, the General Manager of the Environmental Transformation Commission (ENTRACO) in charge of evacuating refuse from the city, snubbed efforts to get his reactions on the reason for the non-evacuation of the Douglas road refuse heap.

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Early Morning Sex Is Best For Health

A Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Ilorin, Musa Toyin Yakubu said early morning sex is not only good for love life, but very beneficial to a couple’s health.

Yakubu., who made the observation in his inaugural lecture titled “Knocking Down the Barriers to Four O’clock Activities and Reproductive Inadequacies”, expressed concern over the rate of erectile dysfunction among men and advocated regular screening/check-ups by individuals.

His words:  “Four O’clock activity denotes early morning sex or early morning penile-vaginal intercourse. Although legitimate sex can be performed at any time of the day, the best time to have sexual intercourse is not in the dark night hours but early in the morning between 3am to 5am which typically is 4am, hence the term, Four O’Clock”.

He recalled several divorce cases reported in the newspapers, tracing most of them to sexual inadequacies. He said: “Having sex first thing in the morning and a minimum of three to four times a week is not only good for love life, but also beneficial health-wise.”

He listed the benefits of early morning sex to include: lowering blood pressure, reducing the risk of heart attack by releasing oestrogen in women and protecting against heart diseases and prostate cancer; boosting the immune system by stimulating the body’s first line of defence, immunoglobulin A, against cold and fever; regulating menstruation by influencing the levels of lutenizing hormones that control menstrual period in women and help sleep better; releasing the feel-good chemical, oxytocin, that enhances closeness with ones’ partner and makes people happier for a longer period of time and as a form of exercise, it reduces weight.

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Federal Government Confirms Existence Of Poisonous Rice In Nigerian Market

The Federal Government yesterday, confirmed the existence of poisonous rice in Nigerian markets.
It vowed to check its smuggling by deploying its various agencies such as Presidential Committee on Trade Malpractices, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Kebbi State government and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) who would be working as a team to halt further infiltration of expired rice via various land borders.
The agencies at a joint media briefing yesterday in Abuja, said intelligence report revealed that rice contaminated by dirty waters of the creeks have been smuggled into various markets. The expired poisonous rice said to be dangerous to health are capable of causing chronic ailments.
Addressing the media, chairman of Presidential Committee on Trade Malpractices, Dahiru Ado Kurawa, said that President Muhammadu Buhari on realizing that Nigeria was capable of producing enough rice, made him to impose ban on the product.

Nigeria Nature Health Online's investigations reveal that these poisonous rice are toxic and hazardous to health. A bad bout of food poisoning can cause vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach cramps and put you out of action often for 24 hours. NHS Choices said other symptoms can include a lack of energy, loss of appetite, a high temperature, chills and aching muscles. In some extreme cases, the symptoms can also lead to dehydration and even death.
A 2014 report by the The Food Standards Agency showed 500,000 people got food poisoning - attributable to 13 different types of pathogens, or bacteria including E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella.

The BBC reports that around 100 people each year - mainly the young and the very old - get food poisoning so badly they can die from it.
Although some people believe the biggest food poisoning risks come from meat, people can get food poisoning from eating reheated rice.
However, experts suggest it is not the reheating that’s the cause of food poisoning - it is the way it is stored before it goes into the market.
The FSA said: “Uncooked rice can contain spores of bacteria that can cause food poisoning.“When the rice is cooked, the spores can survive. Then, if the rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores will multiply and may produce poisons that cause vomiting or diarrhoea.
“Reheating the rice won't get rid of these poisons.
“So, the longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that poisons produced could stop the rice being safe to eat. A couple of weeks ago some cities in Nigeria, including Lagos, recorded an outbreak of diarrhea and cholerah which claimed many lives. Even though initial reports suggested that the outbreak could have come from unhygienic "Abacha" salad, many people are now beginning to suspect that it could have been due to the existence of these poisonous rice in the market.

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British Scientists Discover Possible Cure For HIV/AIDS

A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of  HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five United Kingdom universities.

The unnamed 44-year-old is the first of 50 people to complete a trial of the ambitious treatment, designed by scientists and doctors from five of Britain’s leading universities.

The Managing Director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, UK, Mark Samuels, said the treatment was the first therapy created to have tracked down and destroyed HIV in every part of the body, including in the dormant cells that evade current treatments.

The scientists told newsmen that presently “the virus is completely undetectable in the man’s blood, although that could be as a result of regular drugs.”

However, if the dormant cells are also cleared out it could represent the first complete cure.

Samuels said, “This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

The trial is being undertaken by researchers from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, London, University College, London and King’s College, London.

HIV is so difficult to treat because it targets the immune system, splicing itself into the DNA of T-cells so that they not only ignore the disease, but turn into viral factories which reproduce the virus.

Current treatments, called anti-retroviral therapies, target that process but they cannot spot dormant infected T-cells.

The new therapy works in two stages. Firstly, a vaccine helps the body to recognise the HIV-infected cells so it can clear them out. Secondly, a new drug called Vorinostat activates the dormant T-cells so they can be spotted by the immune system.

A consultant physician at Imperial College, London, Prof. Sarah Fidler, said the new therapy was specifically designed to clear the body of all HIV viruses, including dormant ones.

Fidler said, “It has worked in the laboratory and there is good evidence it will work in humans too, but we must stress we are still a long way from any actual therapy.

“We will continue with medical tests for the next five years and at the moment we are not recommending stopping ART but in the future, depending on the test results, we may explore this.”

Only one person has ever been cured of HIV. He is Timothy Brown, also known as the ‘second’ Berlin patient, who received a stem cell transplant from a patient with natural immunity to HIV in 2008.

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Kids' Heavy Back Packs May Be Killing Them Slowly

MOST children have to drag huge backpacks to and from school every day. Like turtles with oversized shells, they stagger under the weight of huge packs from their home to school and back, some even have to run or climb stairs with such heavy backpacks. It seems normal and the routine of every child, but how dangerous is this seemingly innocuous task?
Professor Francis Uba, a consultant Paediatric Surgeon at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, has declared that carrying heavy backpacks has a number of health implications on children who are subjected to such burden.
“Children who have to carry heavy backpacks to and from school every day may experience strains, aching backs, shoulder and neck pains, tingling arms, weakened muscles, stooped posture and scoliosis, which is the curving of the spine to one side, inducing severe pain.” Uba said.
He also added that some emotional and psychological problems could emerge as well when backpack loads interfere with the way a child walks or inflict accidental injuries on children by causing them to trip and fall in the presence of onlookers. Also, indirect backpack injuries emerge when a heavy backpack falls on another child.
According to spinal surgeons, carrying heavy backpacks increases the risk of back pain and possibly the risk of back pathology.
The prevalence of school children carrying heavy backpacks is extremely high today than it was in the past. The daily physical stresses associated with carrying backpacks cause significant forward lean of the head and trunk. “It is, therefore, assumed that daily intermittent abnormal postural adaptations could result in pain and disability in school children,” experts say.
A recent study on the weight limit recommendation in backpack use for school-aged children, which was published in the Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics, concluded that backpack weight should not exceed 10 to 15 per cent of a child’s body weight and appropriate weight for each child should be determined individually.
Corroborating the findings of the study, Uba explained that “a child’s backpack should weigh no more than about 10 per cent of his or her body weight. This means a student weighing 100 pounds shouldn’t wear a loaded school backpack heavier than about 10 pounds. Parents should avoid any backload for which the child complains of heavy waist.”
The consultant paediatric surgeon, in a bid to help parents determine the appropriate backpack load in relation to a child’s weight, said “a good backpack should be no larger than the child’s back. To simplify matters, one can take two measurements off of a child’s back and use those for the maximum height and width of the backpack by finding the maximum height, which could be done by measuring from the shoulder line to the waist line and adding two inches. The shoulder line is where the backpack straps will actually rest on the body, about half way between the neck and shoulder joint.
“The waist line is at the belly button. The backpack should fit two inches below the shoulders and up to four inches below the waist, so adding two inches to our measurement will give that. The width of the back can be measured between the ridges of the shoulder blades. An extra inch or two is acceptable.”
Backpack injuries may range from mild to chronic and could have some devastating long term effect on children’s health like shrinkage and long standing back pain.
According to a 2010 study in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, which studied a small test group of children around the age of 11, “the constant weight of backpacks was actually causing spinal cords to compress and causing significant back pain.”
Uba, therefore, charged parents to load their children’s backpacks more appropriately while ensuring that the backpack is of good quality and properly worn.

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Onion Reduces Heart Disease - New Study

Onion is found in every kitchen, but its curative powers make it an important medicinal plant too. Like garlic, it is a member of the lily family. Resent studies have shown that they may help reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke, according to Victoria Jarzabkowski, a nutritionist with the Fitness Institute of Texas at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States (U.S).
Apart from its medicinal properties, the onion is simply delicious. It forms the basis of so many dishes – whether raw, sautéed, baked, steamed or boiled, that it would be difficult to imagine the cuisine of any country without it. “Onions are superhealthy,” Jarzabkowski, adding, “they are excellent sources of vitamin C, sulphuric compounds, flavonoids and phytochemicals.” She explained that phytochemicals, or phytonutrients, are naturally occurring compounds in fruits and vegetables that are able to react with the human body to trigger healthy reactions. Flavonoids are responsible for pigments in many fruits and vegetables.
According to Jarzabkowski, onions encourage a healthy heart in many ways, including “lowering blood pressure and lowering heart attack risk.” A 2002 study in the journal ‘Thrombosis Research’ suggested that sulfur acts as a natural blood thinner and prevents blood platelets from aggregating. When platelets cluster, the risk for heart attack or stroke increases. This research further supports a similar 1992 study in Thrombosis Research that focused on sulfurs in garlic. Furthermore, a 1987 animal study in the ‘Journal of Hypertension’ demonstrated delayed or reduced onset of hypertension with sulfur intake. However, the authors said more research was needed to determine if this benefit might be found in humans. The quercetin in onions may also help prevent plaque buildup in the arteries, which reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. But since most of the studies in this regard have focused on animals, more research is needed to understand the effects in humans.

Onions’ sulfurs may be effective anti-inflammatory agents, according to a 1990 study in the journal ‘International Archives of Allergy and Applied Immunology’. Quercetin has been found to relax the airway muscles and may provide relief of asthma symptoms, according to a 2013 study in the ‘American Journal of Physiology.’

“The polyphenols in onions act as antioxidants, protecting the body against free radicals,” said Anne Mauney, a dietitian based in Washington, D.C. She said eliminating free radicals could help encourage a strong immune system. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, the quercetin in onions also reduces allergic reactions by stopping the body from producing histamines, which are what make humans sneeze, cry and itch if they are having an allergic reaction.

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