GMO Foods: Nigeria Academy Of Science Gives Endorsement Amidst Uncertainty

The Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) has declared that genetically-modified foods are safe for consumption for now.This was against the warning by the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) to the public to be wary of the products that are on sale in some stores. It said none of the products had been approved for local consumption. NAS, during a media roundtable on GMOs in Nigeria at its office in Lagos, said the country was ready for the products and that they were safe for both production and beneficial to the nation based on carefully-documented evidence from developed countries.
The academy noted that the technology, though new with expected fears and concerns, would be useful to the country because of its potential to boost the nation’s agriculture, which would resolve food insecurity.
The outgoing president of NAS, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, said though the technology seems fresh, but nothing is new with it, as the academy, in accordance with its mandate, has examined available evidence from researches in advanced countries.
According to him, the academy’s stance was informed by existing evidence from the industrialised countries, which have carefully followed laid-down principles for such activities, “but in Nigeria, the system has just been put in place, and we need to prepare for the future.”
Tomori, who noted that there were no forecasts of long-term effect, stressed: “We cannot predict the future and what is going to happen with these GMOs, but so far so good, there are no problem from where they have been used; but that does not mean that it is going to be good forever. We must be on the alert to know when changes are coming up.”
Besides, a professor of plant breeding and crop biotechnology with the Department of Genetic and Biotechnology, University of Calabar, Effiom Ene-Obong, who said there were no scientific evidence that agree with the raised health concerns of GMOs worldwide, “as they are safe for both production and consumption.”
He noted that though genetically-modified foods are not commercially produced in Nigeria yet, three quarters of countries in the world are keyed into them and as a new technology, fears being entertained are expected, “but rather the benefits outweigh the worries”
Ene-Obong added: “Before these products are sent into the market, lots of trials and investigations are done by so many agencies, such as the Academy of Sciences Worldwide, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), World Health Organisation (WHO), to monitor and make sure they are safe for human consumption and they have recommended.”

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75,000 Children In Northern Nigeria To Die In A Few Weeks Unless...United Nations

The lives of children in the northern part of Nigeria are currently hanging in the balance as the United Nations, yesterday, warned that  75,000 children risk dying in "a few months" as hunger grips the country's ravaged north-east in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.
Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to the impoverished region since taking up arms against the government in 2009, displacing millions and disrupting farming and trade.
Nigeria's president, Muhammadu Buhari, has reclaimed territory from the Islamists but the insurgency has taken a brutal toll, with more than 20,000 people dead, 2.6 million displaced, and famine taking root.
UN humanitarian coordinator Peter Lundberg said the crisis was unfolding at "high speed".
"Our assessment is that 14 million people are identified as in need of humanitarian assistance" by 2017, Lundberg said in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
Of these, 400,000 children are in critical need of assistance, while 75,000 could die "in the few months ahead of us", Lundberg said.
The UN hopes to target half of the 14 million people - a population bigger than that of Belgium - with the Nigerian government working to reach the rest.
But Lundberg said the UN did not have enough money to avert the crisis and called on international partners, the private sector and Nigerian philanthropists to "join hands" to tackle the problem.
"We need to reach out to the private sector, to the philanthropists in Nigeria," Lundberg said.
"We will ask international partners to step in because we can only solve this situation if we actually join hands."

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Malnutrition Looms In Nigeria - Buhari

Malnutrition due to scarcity of food, may soon be the lot of Nigerians if news reaching Nigeria natural Health Online is anything to go by.

The Presidency has raised the alarm that Nigeria, currently Africa's largest producer of cereals and grains, risks famine from early next year following a huge demand in the global market targeting the nation's surplus production.

The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said this while featuring on radio program in Kano yesterday.

The presidential aide told Pyramid Radio that the huge demand for Nigeria's grains in the global market was creating "an excellent environment for the mindless export of Nigerian grains across our borders and unless this curtailed, Nigerian markets will be bereft of food by January next year."

He noted that the Ministry of Agriculture had advised Buhari on the need to draw the attention of all Nigerians to this issue "which, if not addressed promptly, could lead to a shortage of grains in our country by January."

Shehu stated: "Over the past year, Providence has blessed Nigeria with a bountiful harvest of grains, more than enough to feed the country and to export to other countries. At present, there is a high demand for grains from Nigeria, from African countries as distant as Libya and Algeria, and from places as far away as Brazil.

"However, the Ministry of Agriculture has raised concerns about a massive rate of exportation, which could lead to a shortage of grains in Nigeria by January."

Shehu, who said Nigeria currently enjoys what he called a free market situation, stressed that "President Muhammadu Buhari is not in any way opposed to or intent on tampering with that."

He said exporters, on the other hand, also have a moral obligation to make their produce available to Nigerians who live within the country’s borders "to ensure that our citizens have access to food."

According to him, the Ministry of agriculture estimates that no fewer than 500 trucks laden with grain leave Nigerian markets every week headed for countries outside the borders.

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Exercise Can Help Control Diabetes

As Nigeria joins the rest of the international community to mark the World Diabetes Day, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has said that healthy lifestyle which involves balanced diet and regular exercise can control diabetes.
The Minister made this revelation yesterday in his message to Nigerians on World Diabetes Day. The United Nations sets aside November 14 of every year as Word Diabetes Day.
Diabetes, often referred to by doctors as diabetes mellitus, describes a group of metabolic diseases in which the person has high blood glucose (blood sugar), either because insulin production is inadequate, or because the body’s cells do not respond properly to insulin, or both.
The International Diabetes Federation, IDF, estimates that about 415 million people have diabetes in the world and more than 14 million people in the African region; by 2040 this figure will more than double. In Nigeria alone, the IDF data shows that there were more than 1.56 million cases of diabetes in Nigeria in 2015.
Adewole said that Federal Government was committed to increasing awareness on Diabetes and how to control it. He said:“Federal Government is committed to stepping up advocacy to create awareness that diabetes is preventable if people change their life style.
When you watch what you eat, when you exercise regularly, you can definitely stay away from diabetes, but in case you discovered that you have it, you can manage it.”
The Minister urged the general public to enrol with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as such would reduce the cost any medication. Adewole also encouraged members of the public to go for diabetics screening to know their status.
He further stressed that diabetes is preventable and can only be prevented through healthy lifestyle. According to the United States, U.S. Centre for Disease Control, CDC, the prevalent of diabetes among blacks is particularly high.
For instance, blacks are 1.7 times as likely to develop diabetes as whites. Besides, the prevalence of diabetes among blacks has quadrupled during the past 30 years.
Among blacks age 20 and older, about 2.3 million have diabetes – 10.8 per cent of that age group. Furthermore, blacks with diabetes are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to develop diabetes and to experience greater disability from diabetesrelated complications such as amputations, adult blindness, kidney failure, and increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
Similarly, death rates for blacks with diabetes are 27 per cent higher than for whites.

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Daily Soda Consumption Increases Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Scientists have raised the alarm over the negative impact of sugary soda on health, saying drinking a can of sugary soda can dramatically heighten a person’s risk of developing prediabetes.
The new findings is published in the ‘Journal of Nutrition’. Prediabetes is a ‘warning sign’ condition that precedes full-blown type 2 diabetes, a long term metabolic disorder that is characterised by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin.
Senior Researcher, Nicola McKeown, who is a scientist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Agieng at Tufts University in Boston, said: “A person who drinks a daily can of sugar-sweetened beverage has a 46 per cent increased risk of developing pre-diabetes. However, a can of diet soda every day does not boost pre-diabetes risk, the researchers found. The results show how regular sugar intake can batter a person’s body on a cellular level,” McKeown said.
The ‘NewsmaxHealth’ reported that cells require the hormone insulin to break down sugar into energy. But too much sugar in the diet can overexpose the cells to insulin. McKeown said:
“This constant spike in blood glucose over time leads to the cells not becoming able to properly respond, and that’s the beginning of insulin resistance.”
Once insulin resistance starts, blood sugar levels rise to levels that are damaging to every major system in the body. Pre-diabetes is an important landmark on the way to type 2 diabetes, McKeown said. It means a person has elevated blood sugar — a sign of increasing insulin resistance — but has not entered fullblown type 2 diabetes.
However, she asserted that prediabetes is reversible if a person cuts back on sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the American diet as well as diets of most countries around the world including Nigeria.
These results show cutting back on sugary drinks is “a modifiable dietary factor that could have an impact on that progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes,” McKeown said.
For this study, McKeown and her colleagues analysed 14 years of data on nearly 1,700 middleaged adults. The information was obtained from the Framingham Heart Study, a federally funded program that has monitored multiple generations for lifestyle and clinical characteristics that contribute to heart disease.
Participants did not have diabetes or prediabetes when they entered the study. They self-reported their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and diet sodas.
The research team found those who drank the highest amounts of sugarsweetened beverages — six 12-ounce servings a week, on average — had a 46 per cent higher risk of prediabetes, if researchers didn’t weigh other factors.
However, the American Beverage Association counters that sugar in beverages isn’t the sole risk factor for prediabetes.

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5000 Daily HIV Screening For Calabar Carnival

The United Nations Population Fund, UNPF, has put plans in place to screen 5,000 persons daily for HIV/AIDS, during the Calabar Carnival. The Programme Officer of UNPF in Nigeria, Mr. Araoyinbo Idowu, disclosed this to newsmen at the  weekend. Idowu said that UNPF will conduct the tests in collaboration with an NGO, Excellence Community Education Welfare Scheme, ECEWS. He said the fund will organise an awareness campaign tagged Wise Up Cross River, on a daily basis throughout the one month carnival. 
According to Idowu, “there are going to be some demonstrations by youths and various stakeholders during the HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. In the course of the campaign, there will be various activities including one-on-one counselling, music, graphic designs, tattoo inscription and games. Also, many young volunteers and other stakeholders will be on stage to entertain people each day at the condom zone.” 
The Programme Officer said that the campaign was aimed at sensitizing youths on the dangers of HIV/AIDS and the need for safe sex. He said the programme will also bring together commercial sex workers, student organisations and those already living with the virus, to exchange knowledge on the disease. According to him, the organisation would mobilise youths from the 18 local government areas in the state to participate in the programme. 
Idowu also said that condoms would be distributed free during the month-long campaign. He added that UNPF decided to bring the campaign to the carnival because of its popularity and mass participation.

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