Lassa Fever Kills Mortuary Attendant, Nurse In Ogun State

The public has been admonished to be careful and to take issues of personal hygiene seriously as an outbreak of Lassa fever in Abeokuta, Ogun State has claimed the lives of an Assistant Chief Nursing Officer, Mrs. Abolanle Adesuyi, and a mortuary attendant, Mr. Great Okusaga.
Okusaga was said to have recently completed his one year compulsory service with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Apart from the deceased, two others, including a doctor and a nurse at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Idi-Aba, Abeokuta, have allegedly been infected by the dreaded disease and placed under surveillance.
The outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever came barely four months after the state was declared Lassa-free by government. The resurgence of the disease has, however, ignited panic among staff of the hospital, patients and other members of the public.
But government yesterday allayed the fears of members of the public, saying it was on top of the situation. It was learnt that the mortuary attendant died on Friday while Adesuyi died on Saturday night.
Sources said the nurse had earlier attended to the morgue attendant when he was rushed to the FMC and the tragic events which followed sparked suspicion.
The autopsy subsequently conducted on the late nurse at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was said to have confirmed that she died of Lassa fever.
As information spread about the disease, some patients on admission were said to have asked the authorities to hurriedly discharge them for fear of contracting the disease. It was also learnt that Okusaga’s father is the consultant in charge of the morgue at the hospital.
When contacted, the FMC Public Relations Officer, Abeokuta, Segun Orisajo, confirmed the incident.
He said two other members of staff had been placed under surveillance. Orisajo said the Ministry of Health had embarked on a contact tracing exercise to ascertain the number of people who could have also contacted the disease.
He said: “They are also doing decontamination of thematic areas but the management of FMC has assured members of the public not to exercise fear because it can only be contacted only through fluid.
“Officials of the state Ministry of Health led by the Commissioner, Dr. Babatunde Ipaye, was at the hospital to render their support.” But reacting, Ipaye said panic over the outbreak of Lassa fever in the state was presumptuous and unnecessary.
He promised that all those who might have had contacts with the victims had been placed under surveillance. According to him, the disease could be transmitted where there was contact with the body fluid of a victim.
The commissioner explained that government had always been proactive on issues relating to public health. He added that the state never recorded any case of Lassa fever except for the two cases imported to the state from Ebonyi and Kogi states a few months ago. Ipaye disclosed that Ministry of Health, in collaboration with FMC, would quickly set up an isolation centre at the hospital to attend to any emergency.
He said: “We are going to immediately create an isolation centre here at FMC to cater for unexpected cases and emergency on public health issues like Lassa fever to include other communicable diseases. I have sent medical officers out to confirm the root of the case.”
Ipaye, however, urged the nurses to always attend to all patients in the most hygienic and clinical manner.
The commissioner said continuous sensitisation was ongoing on the need for the public to maintain high personal hygiene, get rid of rats in and around the houses, proper food storage procedures and constant hand washing.

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Nigerian Customs Intercept 102 Bags Of Plastic Rice

The Federal Operations Unit, Ikeja, of the Nigeria Customs Service has intercepted 102 bags of plastic rice branded “Beat Tomato Rice’’ with no date of manufacture.

The Customs Area Controller of  F.O.U. Comptroller Mohammed Haruna, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria yesterday in Lagos.

He said that the commodity was stored for distribution as Yuletide gifts for the public.

Haruna said that officers of the unit intercepted the plastic rice along Ikeja area on Monday, adding that a suspect was arrested in connection with the seizure.

“Before now, I thought it was a rumour that the plastic rice is all over the country but with this seizure, I have been totally convinced that such rice exists.

“We have done the preliminary analysis on the plastic rice. After boiling, it was sticky and only God knows what would have happened if people consumed it.

“I advise those economic saboteurs who see Yuletide season as a peak period for nefarious acts to desist from such illegal business.

“The unit has decided other operational modalities that will give them a run for their monies and count their losses,” NAN quoted the controller as saying.

He described smuggling as a global phenomenon, adding that such act could not be curbed entirely but could be brought to its barest minimum.

Haruna appreciated well-meaning Nigerians who provided the service with prompt information that led to the discovery of the bags of plastic rice.

The controller, however, advised the media to educate the public on the existence of plastic rice, adding that it was no longer a rumour.

Haruna assured Nigerians that the distribution point of the particular plastic rice seized by the unit had been blocked with immediate effect.

He said that investigation was still ongoing.

The controller said the unit would hand over the plastic rice to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control for proper investigation.

Plastic rice is toxic to the body and can lead to a host of health issues including even death. 

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Hydrochloric Acid In The Stomach Is Strong Enough To Melt Razor Blade - New Study

In the following article, Eric Troy writes on the recent report from medical research that the Hydrochloric acid found in the stomach is strong enough to melt a razor blade.
There is a report that your stomach acid is so strong that it can dissolve a razor blade. I'd hate to be the guy to test that assumption, but it is true that the hydrochloric acid in your stomach is some strong stuff. While your blood has a pH of around 7.4, your stomach acid has a pH of 1. That means it is a strong acid indeed. But surely, if your stomach acid could dissolve the metal of a razor blade, it would dissolve itself? Surely not! It turns out, according to at least one study, that stomach acid can do a pretty good number on a razor blade.
Of course, if there was a razor blade in your stomach, it would do a lot of damage. So, researchers did not have someone ingest a razor blade to test this. Instead they studied metal corrosion by stomach acid in vitro, meaning "outside the body in a simulated environment." According to the study by Paul K. Li, et al. corrosion of razor blades occurs fairly rapidly in the normal stomach. Now, I think that this is a stretch, because a stomach with a razor blade in it probably wouldn't be a normal stomach for long, and the  oesophagus wouldn't be very happy, either. Nevertheless, according to the research, double-edged blades become fragile and easily-breakable within 24 hours, having only 63% of their original mass. You should note, however, that the stomach acid had no effect on pennies within this time-frame, nor did it cause disc batteries to spring a leak within the same amount of time.
It would be a stretch to say that stomach acid would have a large effect on a big chunk of steal within 24 hours, and of course, things do not sit in your stomach for that long. Razor blades are already very thin and flexible pieces of metal, so to corrode them enough to be brittle is perhaps not as much a feat as it seems. We do not know how long it would take to completely dissolve one.
Regardless, stomach acid, it appears, can begin to dissolve a razor blade in a reasonable time period, perhaps underscoring just how awesome our digestive system is. But if the acid is so strong, how can your stomach hold it without the acid eating right through? If you eat a steak, it will be nothing more than a liquid slurry of mushy nastiness in no time. And your stomach is, essentially, meat, right? At least, it is made of proteins. Well, the truth is that your stomach acid would happily digest your stomach if given a chance. And, when things don't go right, we get things like ulcers, which are open sores or raw areas in the stomach. When this happens, it is because a large enough amount of acid has come into contact with the stomach wall on a regular enough basis.
Normally, however, the stomach has a protective lining. This lining consists of a layer of mucosal protein (just think mucus) that is covered with molecules of sugar, held together tightly through the magic of chemical bonds. The sugars are really good at resisting the acid. You have a bunch of specialized epithelial cells that produce this mucous stuff.
It's not perfect protection, and some stomach acid gets through now and again. Now, there is a lot of blood flow in the stomach wall, so that helps to neutralize and wash away some of the acid, but it still does damage and it destroys some of the cells of the stomach. In fact, a whole lot of your stomach cells get destroyed, all the time. Thankfully, they are such busy little buggers when it comes to reproducing themselves. They do NOT take days off, at least normally. When cells are damaged, newly generated cells move up to take their place. In fact, the entire stomach lining is replaced about every three days.
When things go wrong and the mucus lining is damaged, and more acid than normal gets through, damage can occur faster than cells can be renewed, and thus a sore, or even a hole, can form. This is called an ulcer. People used to think that ulcers were caused by a bad diet. Spicy foods or fatty foods were often blamed, as well as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and just a predisposition for producing excess stomach acid. While there is not a lot of evidence that food habits or stress causes ulcers, some of these other factors may be at work. Mostly, though, these earlier beliefs about the causes of ulcers were a matter of correlation. It is true that the pain and discomfort of ulcers can get worse when we eat spicy foods, drink alcohol, or during periods of stress.
The theory now is that the most common cause of an ulcer is a bacterial infection. It usually happens when the stomach becomes infected with a bacteria called Heliobacter pylori (H. pylon). Most of us already have these bacteria in our digestive tract. These bugs can secrete an enzyme around them that protects them from the stomach acid, and then they can invade the mucosal layer, taking up residence there and weakening the stomach lining, allowing too much acid to leak through, resulting in an ulcer. That is why one of the standard treatments for ulcers, today, is an antibiotic.

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New Revolutionary Cancer Vaccine Ready For Try

The University of Helsinki, Finland, has developed a vaccine that can prevent and possibly cure cancer without any other form of treatment, including chemotherapy.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. “A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins.”
If all goes according to plan, the first human clinical trials for the vaccine will be run in South Africa, on Melanoma patients with triple negative breast cancer. Vaccine trial is considered very cheap in Africa and South Africa has remained a big industry for it.
Speaking more about the vaccine at the just-concluded Slush 2016, an annual global conference for start-ups and venture capitalists, the Director, Life Sciences, Helsinki Innovation Services, Dr. Milla Koistinaho, told The Media that the university required at least €6 million to commercialize the revolutionary drug.
She explained that about €3 million would probably come from Finnish government sources as a Research and Development (R & D) loan, while the remaining €3 million would come from equity funding.
Plans for the trial in Africa notwithstanding, there are concerns that the drug may only be affordable to the rich.
“Investors are really interested in funding the commercialisation of the vaccine. Basically, we just founded the company and now we are talking to investors globally,’’ Koistinaho said. “We have had good discussions with investors in Asia, United States, in Europe and Finland. We expect that the first seed round will happen definitely in less than two months.”
Global interest in commercialising the vaccine may not be unconnected with the fact that in 2015, there were an estimated 17.5 million cancer cases around the globe and 8.7 million deaths, according to a new report from the Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration published online by the JAMA Oncology.
Furthermore, statistics from the National Cancer Institute indicate that “The number of new cancer cases will rise to 22 million within the next two decades.
“While more than 60 per cent of the world’s new cancer cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, 70 per cent of the world’s cancer deaths also occur in these regions.”
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. The cancer cells grow and divide to create more cells and will eventually form a tumour.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide and estimates of its burden around the globe are vital for cancer control planning. There are more than 100 types of cancers. The treatment may include chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery.
Elaborating on the technological and scientific breakthrough, Koistinaho said “the vaccine was invented by a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, the University of Helsinki. This project got its origin from an invention disclosure that the professor filed to the university two years ago.
“We first of all evaluated whether it was scientifically interesting and whether it was something that could be commercialized and the answer was yes. So we filed an application in 2014 and then attracted governmental commercialization funding for this project for two years. Now this concept has been tested in several animal models with cancer and it was discovered that the technology cured the mice of cancer, so this is really a revolutionary treatment.”
She disclosed that the vaccine has not yet been tested on human, adding that “the company has now been permitted to exploit the technology further and the intellectual property has been transferred from the university to the Spinout, and now the Spinout is fund raising to enable starting the clinical trials in humans.
“Most probably, the first indications where we will try this technology in humans will be melanoma, in triple negative breast cancer. The plan is that most probably the first clinical trials, especially in melanoma patients will be run in South Africa.”
With regard to the rate of cure, Koistinaho said: “Basically this only cured mice so far, but the rates are remarkable. Typically, we have run animal experiments where first, the mice were inoculated with melanoma (a type of malignant cancer that develops from the pigment-containing cells known as melanocytes) cells and they created melanoma tumors and then we treated them with this technology and the tumors disappeared completely.”

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Over 90 Percent Of Nigerian Female Prisoners Are Pregnant

An alarm has been raised over the poor health conditions of female inmates of Nigerian prisons.The National Council of Women’s Society (NCWS) has disclosed that 90 per cent of female prisoners in the country were either pregnant or nursing mothers.
The society’s president, Mrs. Gloria Shoda, made the disclosure a couple of days ago in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital at the inauguration of new executives.
She appealed to the Federal Government to formulate policies to protect female prisoners. She also urged the National Human Rights Commission to intervene to stop all forms of discrimination against female prisoners who are awaiting trial.
According to her, assisting women with the relevant skills could help in building a better society.She said: “It is only when women are considered as the center of development that the economy could be better developed.
“We urge government to integrate gender into its developmental agenda by including them in public policy and governance. Women and girls are facing so many unpleasant challenges in the country. Everyday, the newspapers report incidents of violence against them even in the internally displaced persons camps.”
She urged them to embrace the nationwide slogan of “change begins with me,” to support one another.
Investigations carried out by Nigeria Natural Health Online shows that these pregnant women do not have a standard prenatal attention that a normal pregnant woman should have. There are a range of adverse health effects associated with maternal under-nutrition. It can affect both the pregnant woman and developing baby in the short and long-term.
A woman’s nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant influences her health during pregnancy and the health of her baby. It is determined largely by her nutritional intake before pregnancy. If a woman is under-nourished prior to conception because she does not eat enough, she may be malnourished and underweight at the time she conceives. This will have an ongoing effect on her nutritional status throughout the pregnancy. Her nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant is also an important factor influencing the health of the foetus, as well as the long term health of the infant.
Women who are under-nourished (have a BMI of <18 .5kg="" m="" sup="">2

) at the time of conception are unlikely to improve their nutritional status during pregnancy, when their bodies have additional demands due to the growing baby. They may fail to gain sufficient weight during pregnancy and have a higher risk of maternal mortality (dying whilst pregnant) than normal weight women. Under-nourished women may also lack the nutritional stores required to support embryo growth. Embryo refers to a fertilised egg, before it begins to take on human characteristics (at which stage it is referred to as a foetus). In the first few days after conception the embryo exists in the woman’s womb but has not yet implanted into the lining of the womb where it will grow throughout the pregnancy. This is known as the pre-implantation period and is the period of pregnancy in which cells divide and replicate most rapidly. Maternal malnutrition can adversely affect the division and replication of cells in the embryo at this stage, impairing its development. Impaired embryo development in turn adversely effects the development of the foetus in the later stages of pregnancy.
A woman’s nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant also influences the differentiation of cells in the embryo into foetal and placental cells. When the embryo implants into the wall of a woman’s uterus, it develops two types of cells, those that will become the foetus and those which will become the placenta (the structure which nourishes and supports the foetus during pregnancy). In undernourished women, a greater number of cells are likely to form the placenta compared to the foetus, meaning that the foetus begins its life smaller than it should do. This can lead to restricted foetal growth and increases the risk of the baby being born at a low-birth weight (<2 .5kg="" a="" associated="" birth="" in="" is="" low="" of="" range="" strong="" turn="" weight="" with="">adverse outcomes
in childhood and later in life.In the light of the above revelations, analysts who spoke with Nigeria Natural Health Online, said the federal government of Nigeria should pay attention to the alarm raised by NCWS and come to the rescue of these pregnant female prisoners.

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Under-Cooked Chicken Could Cause Paralysis

Researchers have alerted the public that undercooked chicken could trigger a potentially fatal neurological condition that makes sufferers paralysed.
The warning came ahead of public preparation for the Yuletide, a season of celebration when millions of families cherish chickens as part of the delicacy consumed to celebrate both Christmas and the coming New Year. These are the findings of a research published in the ‘Journal of Autoimmunity’.
A common bacteria, ‘campylobacter jejuni’, which lurks in the raw flesh of chickens has been found to cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, GBS, a lifethreatening disorder where the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system.
Early symptoms include feeling weak and experiencing tingling sensations in the legs. ‘Campylobacter jejuni’ infects more than a million people yearly in the United States, U.S and is also known to trigger other autoimmune disorders such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Reiter’s arthritis. Scientists at Michigan State University have shown how the bacteria triggers GBS, and hope that discovery will help formulate a cure.
If chicken isn’t cooked to a proper minimum internal temperature, harmful bacteria can remain, posing a threat, the UK Edition of ‘The Sun’ reported. It is well known that some bacteria in undercooked chicken can cause a nasty bout of food poisoning.
But now, the evidence points to a far more important reason to ensure your chicken is cooked thoroughly. Reacting to the development, Lead Author of the study, Professor Linda Mansfield, said: “What our work has told us is that it takes a certain genetic makeup combined with a certain campylobacter strain to cause this disease.
“The concerning thing is that many of these strains are resistant to antibiotics and our work shows that treatment with some antibiotics could actually make the disease worse.”
GBS is the leading cause of acute neuromuscular paralysis, yet the exact cause remains a mystery to experts. Prof. Mansfield and her team have created three preclinical models of GBS that represent two different forms of the syndrome seen in humans.

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