Every year Nigeria loses an estimated 59,000 women to predictable and easily prevented deaths. Each week, Nigerian families lose 1,131 mothers, friends, sisters and daughters to pregnancy.  The children these women leave behind are forced to grow up without mothers, and are more likely to die before their fifth birthday. The horror of maternal mortality affects the family, the community [...]

By Tayo Olaleye A while ago, I came across this article in which Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, the present Minister of Health, proposed that traditional medicines should be incorporated into the current medical curriculum. The article further stated that medical practitioners ought to ‘equip’ themselves with ‘expert knowledge’ of traditional medicines. As with everything, there are pros and cons to such [...]

By Oluwatobi Odetola A low rumble in the dust of the North has morphed into a mighty roar into our national consciousness. Better late than never, some would say. Since March 2010, over four hundred people, mostly children, have died from the adverse effects of gold mining in Zamfara state. The humanitarian agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has already provided [...]

By Oyedeji Aderemi He was just 28 and became unemployed when his sight started failing him, his means of livelihood was cut off and his ability to seek medical help went down the drain. Looking blankly into space, he tried to locate my voice welcoming him to the hospital. There, where his pupil should be, was a cloudy milky cover. [...]

By Hezekiah Shobiye In Part 1 of this series, I wrote that the Nigerian health care system is unresponsive to both the medical and non-medical needs of its patients; the Nigerian brand of health worker–patient relationship is not working, there is paucity of human and material resources, long waiting times, lack of quality hospitals and a dearth of health professionals with [...]

Forty years ago today, in the district of Colombia, the American Supreme Court passed a law that guarantees the right of American women to legal medical abortion. Roe V. Wade made access to sexual reproductive health a right that cannot be denied for American women. Since then, the conservative faction of that government has been looking for ways of denying [...]

By Oyedeji Aderemi Permit me this time around to talk about a patient who walked into my consulting room to seek medical assistance recently. A bright Thursday morning, sallah was in the air, and people planned to either take the day off to catch up on lost sleep, or to visit friends. I had no such plans, for the holiday [...]

By Hezekiah Shobiye “You are very rude. I am not your mate. I have children far older than you. You need to learn how to talk to people”.  These were the words that came out of an helpless elderly woman to a female laboratory worker one hot afternoon at a government clinic located in the suburb of Lagos. Apparently, she [...]

By Oyedeji Aderemi The difficult (hard) to reach, either due to topography of their geographical location or due to other natural disasters, are a significant portion of the total population of this nation and many of them are totally neglected safe for occasional foray of religious bodies who go with gospel on the wheels of health care delivery to this [...]

By Tayo Olaleye It is hard to miss the attention AIDS has been getting recently. The war against HIV is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG); aiming to halt and reverse the spread of the disease by 2015. An international AIDS conference held in Washington DC, US in July, adds to the renewed attention to HIV/AIDS. Amongst other objectives, [...]