Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mr Osita Aboloma, has called on table water producers in the country to adhere strictly to the relevant Nigerian Industrial Standards.
Director-General, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mr Osita Aboloma
Aboloma, who made the call at a one-day workshop organised for Association of Table Water Producers, Osun Chapter on Friday, December 1, 2017 in Osogbo, added that the call became imperative to avoid cholera and other water related diseases.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop has as its theme: “Water and its associated production challenges.’’
Aboloma was represented at the occasion by Dr (Mrs) Omolara Okunola, the SON Food/Codex Deputy Director.
Aboloma said the need for quality drinking water, packaged under very stringent hygienic condition could not be over emphasised.
He said when one considers the costly effect of water-borne diseases such as dysentery, diarrhoea, typhoid fever among others; it became important to adhere to hygienic water production.
He said that there was need for bottle water producers to ensure that the water was produced in an environment free from contamination by human, animal, agricultural and chemical waste.
He said any table water producers who failed to comply with the relevant standard laws would be sanction accordingly.
In his remarks, the SON State Coordinator, Mr Jerome Umoru, said potential hazardous health situation could arise from consumption or use of contaminated packaged water.
Umoru said the workshop was organised to sensitise members of the association on the need to imbibe the culture of safety and quality production of packaged water.
“Water is essential for sustenance of life and that is why it is very important to ensure a very clean environment for water production,’’ he said.
Also speaking, Mr Ademola Adeyeye, Chairman of the Association, said the workshop was timely as it would assist the members to sanitise the water industry in the state.
The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, on Friday, December 1, 2017 in Abuja said 10,000 people die annually due to agony and lack of basic equipment for treatment of cancer.
Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole
Adewole said at the inauguration of the National Hospital’s Radiotherapy Centre with new Multilleave Lenear Accelerator for cancer treatment.
He attributed the number of deaths to lack of necessarily equipment and resources to attend to cancer patients.
The minister, who described cancer as a worldwide disease that kills more people than the combination of Tuberculosis, infectious diseases and HIV, decried the lack of resources to cushion the effect of cancer.
He said: “Base on the review of International Atomic Energy Agencies of all countries conducted in 2013 only South Africa and Egypt have the capability of treating cancer.”
The minister described the situation as worrisome.
Speaking on the inaugurated facility, Adewole commended the Wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo, for her passion in addressing the plight of cancer patients.
He emphasised that such passion had made it a reality for the centre to be operational and described it as a measure toward alleviating the plight of patients.
Nothing the presence of one Multilleave Lenear Accelerator machine at the facility at the moment, he assured of increasing it to two in order to forestall challenges of patients in the event of breakdown of one.
The minister pledged the Federal Government’s commitment to upgrade other seven cancer centres next year in order to minimise the burden of cancer and associated death rates in the country.
“What is important is that the machine has been put to work and upgraded and it is an opportunity for linking those network, treatment modalities that are new.
“Anybody coming to this centre will get the right treatment. With the right complaint, we will minimise our treatment damages to neighbouring organs so that we can be more precise with respect to treatment that we offer.
“We are making moves to have two new machines that can treat people and also pledge to complete this centre to become the first of its kind in Nigeria,’’ Adewole said.
Adewole who noted the standard practice of one machine to one million people, emphasised that considering the population of the country, Nigeria required 200 of such machines across the seven cancer centres in the country.
According to him, if such machines are in place they will adequately meet the challenges of the populace with regard to cancer care.
Earlier, Dr Jafaru Momoh, the Chief Medical Director of National Hospital, said the radiotherapy unit which included women, men and children was first inaugurated in 2000.
Momoh said it has been operational till February this year when it finally broke down due to overstretched among others.
He noted that the new centre had facility for one CT Simulator and two Radiotherapy Bunkers.
According to him, one multileave LINAC was procured in 2013 but was not installed until recently due to paucity of funds to procure the necessary CT simulators and accessories for the installation and inauguration.
“The new LINAC is the first of its kind in Nigeria, staff of relevant departments have been trained on its use.
“Additional support will be needed to complete the entire complex and provide the necessary equipment and relevant manpower to run it as a centre of excellence for cancer care,’’he said.
Osinbajo, while inaugurating the facility, lauded the efforts of the hospital’s management for making the facility a reality.
She described the death of 10,000 people to cancer as unimaginable and assured the hospital of the federal government’s support in making everything available to ensure quality service delivery in the facility.
“I looked forward to a day that the cure of cancer stand but I am happy that though the resources are limited but we are making steps, stride in the right direction.
“I see hope with the machine here and all other things to go. My appeal is for us to love Nigeria and for us to love Nigerians.
“I pray for us to respond to love Nigeria and respond to love Nigerians and the result will be a beloved Nigeria.
“By risen of this building I see patients that are helped, loved ones of patients that are happy that we have a facility that they can use to help their loved ones out of sickness ,’’ she said.
Poultry farmers in Kogi State are to get N4.2 million loan each for egg production under the Federal Government’s National Egg Production (NEGPRO) Scheme.
Poultry farming
Chief Tunde Badmus, the Scheme Manager and National Anchor of the programme, disclosed this at a town hall meeting with poultry farmers in Lokoja, the state capital, on Friday, December 1, 2017.
Badmus said that NEGPRO had started operations in six pilot states, including Kogi.
He said that 150 poultry farmers in Kogi had been registered for the loan, as approved by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Bank of Agriculture (BOA).
According to him, the scheme is to create employment for unemployed citizens who were also determined to become employers of labour.
“A prospective beneficiary must have a farm that can accommodate about 2,000 pullets; the farm must be accessible, while its owner must have a basic knowledge of poultry farming and should also belong to Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN).
“The personal interactions with intending beneficiaries today will be followed by assessment visits to their farms by the technical committee,’’ Badmus said.
Mr Sunday Okwori, a representative of the CBN, applauded Kogi poultry farmers for working hard to be among the first six pilot states to benefit from NEGPRO scheme.
Okwori said that the each beneficiary farmer would get N4.2 million loan, in cash and farm inputs, while the loan would attract nine per cent interest rate with a gestational period of 30 months.
He warned “political and portfolio farmers’’ against registering for the scheme, vowing that such fake poultry farmers would be exposed even after their registration.
He, however, urged the prospective beneficiaries to ensure the repayment of the loan as at when due.
Earlier, Mr Oluwafemi Bolaji, the State Anchor of NEGPRO, said the scheme was set up by the Federal Government to create jobs, eradicate hunger, alleviate poverty and improve the people’s wellbeing.
He said that the scheme was expected to create one million jobs and produce about 50 million eggs daily by 2018.
“This scheme will help to advance the country’s capacity to feed its citizens, while boosting economic activities in the rural areas.
“We will ensure that everything goes smoothly in Kogi in terms of verification, pre and post-stocking inspection, production monitoring and aggregation, among others,’’ he said.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the key stakeholders at the meeting include BOA, FMARD, PAN, Kogi Ministry of Agriculture and Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Company (NAIC), among others.
Eighteen children in every hour were infected with HIV last year.
A crying baby with HIV/AIDS getting an IV at a children’s ward in a hospital
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that this was a sign of scant progress in protecting the world’s young from the deadly AIDS-causing virus.
At the current rate of infection, there will be 3.5 million new cases of HIV among adolescents by 2030, according to projections in the 2017 UNICEF Statistical Update on Children and AIDS.
Around the world, nearly 37 million people – the equivalent of the population of Canada – were living with HIV last year, according to UNICEF.
Among these, 2.1 million adolescents had HIV, a 30 per cent increase from 2005, while 55,000 adolescents aged 10 to 19 and 120,000 children younger than 14 died from AIDS-related causes.
Infected children, younger than 4 years old, faced the highest risk of AIDS-related deaths compared with other age groups.
“The AIDS epidemic is not over; it remains a threat to the lives of children and young people,” said Dr Chewe Luo, the Chief of HIV for UNICEF, in a statement accompanying the report.
“It is unacceptable that we continue to see so many children dying from AIDS and so little progress made to protect adolescents from new HIV infections.”
UNICEF said nearly all the adolescent deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa and, worldwide, more adolescent girls than boys are infected.
The testing and treatment of babies is also lagging with fewer than half of HIV-exposed infants getting tested in their first two months of life.
UNICEF said some progress had been made in preventing mother-to-child transmission with about two million new infections averted since 2000, it said, but that progress was slowing.
UNICEF called for an array of actions, including getting treatment to all infected children, making intervention for adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa a priority, while also introducing HIV self-testing and better data collection.
Governments in Nigeria and Africa in general have been urged to prioritise real estate in their agenda in order to achieve the goal of mass and affordable housing.
This was the consensus of over 350 real estate practitioners from across the globe who are participants at a regional conference in Lagos, aimed at strengthening public and private partnership towards developing the real estate sector in West Africa.
Humanitarian crises around the world will worsen in 2018, with no let-up in civil wars in Africa, near-famines in war-torn regions and the threat of extremist Islamist violence.
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. Photo credit: UN /Mark Garten
A Geneva-based think-tank, ACAPS, made the prediction in a report published on Thursday, November 30, 2017.
ACAPS, a non-profit venture that supports humanitarian aid workers with daily monitoring and analysis of 150 countries, examined the anticipated needs of 18 countries in 2018 and found little to cheer.
“If 2017 did not look good, predictions for 2018 are no better: violence and insecurity are likely to deteriorate in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Ethiopia, Mali, Somalia, and Syria in 2018,” ACAPS director Lars Nissen wrote in the report.
In 2018, Ethiopia will join northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen as places at risk of famine, said the report, entitled “Humanitarian Overview: An analysis of key crises into 2018”.
Rather than bringing stability, the prospect of elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan and Venezuela is expected to exacerbate tensions and fuel violence.
Islamic extremism will also continue to cause death and conflict, the report said.
Inspite of the defeat of Islamic State in its main strongholds in Iraq, the group is expected to continue improvised attacks throughout the country to destabilise the government, as well as gaining strength and resources in southern Libya.
Islamic State is also likely to increase its small position in the Puntland region of Somalia, impacting the civilian population and clashing with its bigger regional rival Al-Shabaab, which will increase the lethality of its own attacks.
Islamist armed groups are also expected to take advantage of the withdrawal of government troops from central Mali, gaining local recruits and further influence, while in Afghanistan the Taliban will consolidate their rural strongholds and increased opium production will boost funding for armed groups.
ACAPS said the fragmentation of armed groups in Central African Republic is expected to worsen the violence there, sending more refugees into Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Militia groups previously focused on local grievances will likely become increasingly frustrated by the national, political, and socioeconomic situation and are likely to increase violence, particularly against government forces and institutions,” ACAPS said.
The Federal Capital Territory Primary Health Care Development Board says it is targeting one million children in the territory to immunise against polio and other childhood diseases.
Polio immunisation in Nigeria. Photo credit: comminit.com
Dr Mathew Ashikeni, the Executive Secretary of the Board, disclosed this at the inauguration of the 16th round of Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week in Abuja on Thursday, November 30, 2017.
Ashikeni explained that apart from vaccination to children against killer diseases, there would be nutritional assessment of children for malnutrition.
He also said that vitamin A supplement would be provided for children under the age of five to boost their immunity and improve their visions.
Ashikeni said that 60,000 pregnant women would be targeted for HIV testing and other free health services during the exercise.
According to him, health workers have been well mobilised to ensure all children and pregnant women in the territory are reached.
The secretary urged the residents to come out to access the free health services that would be provided during the health week.
In her remarks, the Secretary FCTA Health and Human Services, Ms Amanda Pam said that the present administration was committed to ensure healthy living of children and women in the territory.
Pam explained that FCT administration had engaged 50 midwives to be posted to Primary Health Care facilities across the territory and had distributed essential drugs to 60 PHC facilities.
According to her, the FCTA has just constructed 12 new PHC facilities and renovated 18 of them to provide health care services to the people.
Greenpeace Africa and Earthlife Africa Jhb activists on Thursday, November 30, 2017 confronted the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa by blocking the main entrance to the Department with nuclear barrels. The activists made a public demand that the Department of Environmental Affairs withdraws the environmental authorisation that has been issued for a proposed nuclear power station at Duynefontein, adjacent to Koeberg in the Western Cape.
A previous protest at the Department of Environmental Affairs by Greenpeace Africa activists, together with community members from the coalfields around Witbank
At dawn, Greenpeace Africa and Earthlife activists unloaded nuclear barrels filled with smoke and simulated a nuclear disaster. The activists held banners stating that nuclear is never safe and that South Africans say no to nuclear. The main message ‘Stop Nuclear, Protect our Future’ is being displayed on a massive banner, which is hanging from the entrance to the building itself. The protest highlights the fact that nuclear is dangerous and expensive and should not be under consideration in South Africa.
“The Minister of Environmental Affairs is the custodian of the environment for South Africa. The Minister is tasked with ensuring that our constitutional right to a healthy environment is protected for current and future generations. Approving the construction of a nuclear power station is outright negligence and the Minister is putting all South Africans at risk, including future generations. South Africans are clearly saying no to nuclear, and there is no point coming to work if you are going to completely fail to do your job,” said Melita Steele, Senior Climate and Energy Campaign Manager for Greenpeace Africa.
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the new nuclear power station has been a drawn-out process for nearly a decade, with affected communities, civil society and South African citizens conned into contributing to what has been a flawed process from the start. The Minister has chosen to discard the input of civil society and follow the recommendations of a flawed EIA report, which were based on outdated, and incomplete information, as well as assumptions that are not justified or justifiable.
“The 30-day period for South Africans to appeal the environmental authorisation for Duynefontein comes to an end tomorrow. Earthlife Africa and Greenpeace Africa are here to show our opposition to the construction of a new nuclear power station in this country, and to call on the Minister to withdraw her approval. Our activists will continue to blockade the entrance until our demands are met. We are calling on all South Africans to support us in our appeal to the Minister to retract the authorisation for Duynefontenin.” said Makoma Lekalakala, Senior Programmes Officer for Earthlife Africa, Johannesburg.
A detailed appeal will be submitted to the Minister on Friday. Greenpeace, Earthlife Africa and SAFCEI will consider their legal options in terms of the way forward, pending a decision on the appeal by the Department of Environmental Affairs.
