It will soon (on 5 June) be the birthday of HIV and AIDS. It is now 30 years since they arrived on the health horizon to change our world forever. The birthday will be celebrated on 8 June at a High Level Meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly, (40 heads of state and government will attend), to discuss progress in [...]

by Seye Abimbola To have a medical school is an expensive, audacious undertaking anywhere in the world. From very humble beginning at the Yaba Medical School which produced 62 doctors in 18years (1930-1948) Nigeria has made unparalleled achievement in training medical manpower of all cadres. Nigeria has about half of all the medical schools in Sub-Saharan Africa, all nestled within [...]

Why does female circumcision/genital cutting/mutilation get so much attention and media while nobody seems to care that possibly the most sensitive part of the penis, the foreskin, in spite of its importance in sexual activity,  is being yanked off routinely in many countries of the world?  It is estimated that 30% of the world’s male population are circumcised — 99% [...]

Simon Adebola Every nation has laws by which it abides. The constitution is the basis for the legal systems that exist in each country. Each country’s constitution is equally binding on all its citizens and there is nobody that is above the dictates of this document. The sovereignty of any nation state is guarded by its constitution and indeed, no [...]

I thought I’d have you listen in on this IM conversation I had with a friend from medical school, Simon Adebola, about science, science illiteracy and biomedical science in Nigeria/Africa. Simon blogs at iInitiative. Simon Adebola: So tell me, what is new in the nebulous world of cells transmitters and neurobiology? Seye Abimbola: Nebulous world? Simon Adebola: Just teasing. But [...]

It is itself a surprise to me that we are responding to the issue of the alleged Nigerian suicide bomber/terrorist if it was totally unpredictable. We want to condemn it, we are disappointed by what Umar is alleged to have done and the added shame and disrepute that has brought upon Nigeria, but it would be wrong to suggest that [...]

I still remember the shock when I realised that the practice of homeopathy was funded within the National Health Service (NHS) in England. I was taking a lunchtime stroll when I came across the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, which as it turned out was one of the hospitals within the UCL Hospitals NHS trust, which also included the hospital to [...]

Here is a response from my personal blog to Thinking about Evolution, written by Femi Owagbemi, a medical doctor in Nigeria. I couldn’t resist posting it here. This and other responses from Square One can be found here. Evolution is not just a biological concept. It occurs in all facets of life. It is neither merely a human phenomenon but [...]

There is at least one sense in which Nigeria and the US are very similar: having a remarkably high proportion of religious people – or as the present fad expression goes, people that “have a personal relationship with God” – and of course also having a high proportion of creationists, which follows, so it seems, quite easily. This was the [...]

There are many reasons for me to blog about David Morley (1923-2009), who perhaps more than any other western scientist has done more towards the development of paediatrics and child health in Nigeria, Africa and possibly the whole developing world. His work started at the hospital where I was born many years after he worked there, where I later studied, [...]