Despite significant progress in reducing HIV/AIDS infections and related deaths, stigma persists, particularly in workplace environments, according to UN-AIDS. Nigeria aims to further address this issue through collaboration with the United Nations.
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In a press statement by the Saudi Press Attache in Nigeria, Mohammed Alsahabi said the operation was sponsored by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister.
“The Saudi Arabian Medical and Surgical team has completed the separation surgery of Nigerian conjoined twins, Hassana and Husaina, at the King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital in King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh.”
He said the procedure, which began on Thursday morning, marked the culmination of meticulous planning and execution by a dedicated team of medical professionals at Children’s Hospital in Saudi’s capital Riyadh.
Alsahabi further explained that the surgical intervention unfolded in nine planned stages, lasting approximately 14 hours.
“A team comprising 38 consultants, specialists, technicians, and nursing staff specializing in anesthesia, pediatric surgery, urology, orthopedics, plastic surgery, and pediatric neurosurgery collaborated seamlessly to ensure the success of this complex operation.”
“This surgical milestone marked the 60th operation undertaken by the Saudi program for separating Siamese twins, a program that has provided care for 135 conjoined twins from 25 countries over the past 34 years,” Alsahabi stated
“Before the commencement of the procedure, Dr. Abdullah Al Rabeeah, Advisor at the Royal Court, Supervisor General of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief), and head of the medical team, expressed confidence in the success of the procedure, noting a 70% success rate.”
Al Rabeeah commended the Saudi leadership for its unwavering support of the program.” The successful separation of Hassana and Husaina exemplifies the Kingdom’s commitment to advancing medical science and extending compassionate healthcare on a global scale.”
It could be recalled, that the Kano twins, who arrived in Riyadh on October 31, 2023, underwent comprehensive examinations that revealed shared areas in the lower abdomen, pelvis, lower spine, and lower spinal nerves.”
Nigeria's currency crisis has triggered an exodus of businesses from the country. At least four multinationals, including GSK, Bayer and Sanofi, have announced they're ending production, as a scarcity of dollars, a naira in freefall and rampant inflation slashes profits. Bloomberg's Jennifer Zabasajja reports.
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A meningitis outbreak has killed 20 students in northern Nigeria, local media reported Wednesday (Feb. 28).
The death toll which remains provisional was announced by the Yobe state Education commissioner.
The outbreak has been recorded in some secondary schools in the state.
Over a hundred cases have allegedly been reported with three patients said to still be in an intensive care unit responding to treatment.
Meningitis is an infection which causes an acute inflammation of the outer layers of the brain and spinal cord. It can be life-threatening unless diagnosed and treated early.
Transmission is through direct person-to-person contact, including droplets from the nose and throat of infected people.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention shared Wednesday (Feb. 28) on its X account (formerly twitter) a meningitis vigilance map.
Indeed, weather conditions can favour prevalence of meningitis.
Most of cases in the country are reported across states in the northern region.
According to the WHO, the west African nation reported 124 deaths from meningitis between 1 October 2022 and 16 April 2023.
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The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said Nigeria recorded 411 confirmed cases and 72 deaths from Lassa fever across 21 states of the federation from week one to week six of 2024.
The NCDC in its latest situation report for week six spanning 5 to 11 February, revealed that the number of new confirmed cases increased from 70 in week 5 to 83, with nine deaths in the reporting week.
According to the situation report, 65 per cent of all the confirmed cases were from Ondo, Edo, and Bauchi while 35 per cent were reported from 17 states.
The report noted that the number of suspected cases in 2024 (2,122) decreased when compared to that reported for the same period in 2023 (8280).
According to the disease control centre, the predominant age group affected by Lassa fever is 21-30 years, and two new health workers were affected in the reporting week.
NCDC added that the National Lassa fever multi-partner, multi-sectoral Incident Management System has been activated to coordinate response at all levels at the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).
The agency also enumerated some of the challenges in its fight against Lassa fever across the country, listing; late presentation of the cases leading to an increase in CFR, and poor health-seeking behaviour due to the high cost of treatment and clinical management.
Other challenges are poor environmental sanitation conditions and poor awareness reportedly observed in high-burden communities.
Lassa fever
Lassa fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic (excessive bleeding) illness that is transmitted to humans through contact with food or household items contaminated by infected rodents or contaminated persons.
Its symptoms include fever, headache, sore throat, general body weakness, cough, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pains, chest pain, and in severe cases, unexplainable bleeding from ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and other body openings.
By Leshi James, Premium Times
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Asthma sufferers among those rationing drugs amid shortages and high prices after the pharmaceutical company ceased business in Nigeria this year.
Salamat Olashile takes a tablet from a white-and-green sachet. Five minutes later, her breathing is still laboured. “It will soon come down,” she says. She used to have an inhaler, which would have eased her asthma attack faster, but prices have increased dramatically since GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) “exited” the country. She is now reliant on a slower-working tablet called Araminol.
GlaxoSmithKline Nigeria, the country’s subsidiary of the British pharmaceutical firm, first announced in June that Nigeria’s economic problems and foreign currency crisis were severely affecting its work. In August, it said that it would be shutting down operations.
A GSK Global spokesperson said the company was not exiting, but pivoting to a “third-party distributorship”, which it is still processing. “In common with many companies operating in Nigeria, the significant challenge in accessing foreign currency in recent years impacted our local operations and has affected our ability to maintain consistent supply of medicines and vaccines in the market,” the spokesperson said.
Nigerians are now familiar with the resulting shortage of medications – and a spike in cost for inhalers such as Ventolin and Seretide Diskus, antibiotics such as Amoxil, as well as allergy relief drugs, an antimalarial drug and even over-the-counter painkiller, Panadol.
“I’ve been using Ventolin inhalers for eight years now,” says Jalaalah Shittu, a university student first diagnosed with asthma in 2015. “With Ventolin, there’s a hope I can still live a normal life. It provides an almost immediate relief.” But that relief has proved difficult for patients like Olashile and Shittu to replicate with other drugs.
Last week, Olashile’s father went out to get her Ventolin inhaler and came back with Araminol tablets. After a week of her asthma getting worse, he found an inhaler for 9,000 naira (£9), almost four times its usual price.
Olashile says: “My symptoms were worse because of the harmattan – a season characterised by harsh dusty winds and low humidity.” She has stopped going out and is trying to preserve the Ventolin for emergencies.
Shittu, meanwhile, is suffering unpleasant side-effects from alternative drugs. “I start to feel very weak and have a faster heartbeat and shaky body until the drug wears off, and that can take hours,” she says.
Oluwakemi Ebire of Famasi Africa, a digital health platform, says the situation is forcing people to ration medications of all kinds. “The ripple effect of these circumstances on patients is deeply concerning. For those without access to the right information, financial constraints can push them towards counterfeit medication, risking drug-adverse effects, drug resistance, treatment failure and even death.”
Nigeria has an estimated 13 million asthma sufferers, one of the highest rates in Africa. Ebire says: “I spearhead the care and management of chronic patients who depend on these medications for the rest of their lives, and I can tell you that these past few months have been very difficult for our patients, both financially and emotionally.”
In October, Famasi Africa registered a 15% drop in medication adherence rate among diabetic patients under its care, accompanied by a 10% increase in blood sugar levels.
The spokesperson for GSK said none of the medications supplied by the company is considered to be medically critical, and all have generic alternatives. It hoped that new third-party distribution plans could mean some drugs returning to the market early next year.
By Olatunji Olaigbe, The Guardian
Lagos, Nigeria — At about 7pm on August 1, when Vwaere Daiso exited her room on the ninth floor of the 10-storey residence for doctors at the Lagos hospital where she worked to retrieve a parcel from the ground floor, she had no idea it was the last time she would do so.
Moments later, she crashed to the floor together with the lift which had become unhinged.
No help came until after 40 minutes of frantic calls for a rescue team by the facility manager and Daiso’s roommate, who sprinted several flights of stairs to call him. The machines in the emergency section were not working either when she was taken there, so she was pronounced dead just as resuscitation began at about 8:59pm.
The 26-year-old’s death and the state of the facilities in the state-run establishment have angered many of her peers, including Joy Aifuobhokhan, one of the first responders at the scene.
“With all due respect, I feel like that [the late treatment] was medicine after death,” Aifuobhokhan, who was stuck in the same lift last year for hours, told Al Jazeera. “Imagine all of that was in place when Vwaere was first brought in within the first five minutes.”
The struggles of Nigeria’s healthcare system are well-documented and have affected the quality and number of doctors available locally, for decades.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 2,000 Nigerian doctors emigrate yearly to hotspots like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Since 2019, Nigerian newspapers have been reporting about recruitment exercises conducted by Saudi officials in Lagos and Abuja.
The average salary for a Nigerian doctor in the employ of the federal government, is 240,000 naira ($312.92) monthly, a fraction of the 2,448 ($2,967.20) average remuneration for their peers in the UK. Those employed by the state governments earn even less.
And that has been a key factor in their migration.
But doctors say fleeing Nigeria is also a matter of life and death even for them due to deplorable working conditions and poor equipment as they work round the clock.
On September 17, a doctor at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital died after working nonstop for 72 hours.
‘A vicious cycle’
After Daiso’s death, the Lagos state government fired the hospital facility manager and suspended the head of the agency responsible for maintaining the lift. The police also arrested three people.
The incident highlights the state of the health system, according to Dr Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko, general manager at the Nigerian Solidarity Support Fund, a Lagos-based NGO fundraising for medical interventions.
“A strong health system needs to be able to forecast, plan, and respond adequately to health emergencies,” she said.
Only about 72,000 doctors are registered with the Nigerian Medical Association even though approximately 3,000 doctors graduate from Nigeria’s medical schools yearly.
Worse still, only about 35,000 practise in Nigeria, a country of 200 million people, a ratio of one doctor to 10,000 people. This is far below the WHO’s recommended doctor-to-patient ratio of one doctor to 500 people.
This is compounded by a steady decline in the number of nurses, 75,000 of whom have left the country in the last five years.
Routine strikes for better wages and working conditions by available medical personnel have also led to patients now waiting long hours in hospitals to see a doctor. Some have died waiting, especially in areas of conflict in the country’s north.
Doctors often have to innovate on the go, sometimes using cartons as makeshift incubators or conducting critical surgeries by candlelight.
According to Dr Orji Innocent, president of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), doctors now die on a weekly basis due to increased stress and unfavourable working conditions. The association is compiling data on deaths to release soon as a report, NARD told Al Jazeera.
“We have entered a vicious cycle because the few doctors that are left are overworked. Many of them feel that they cannot cope and they will pack their bags and leave the system,” he said. “We believe that with what we are seeing, it will be a matter of weeks before there will be a total collapse of the healthcare system in this country.”
“When you check the surgery booking note, you see people are already booked till July next year. And these are cases that shouldn’t take more than a month for the patient to go under surgery,” Innocent added.
Waning interest
Besides going to practise abroad, many medical personnel are now leaving their jobs in pursuit of less strenuous work elsewhere.
Ayomide Ogunrinde, a trained doctor, told Al Jazeera that she endured sexual harassment from superiors while working at a government hospital and then depression from seeing people die “avoidable deaths”.
“The way the hospitals work is that you have to buy the things you need down to the littlest things like cotton wool and that makes work very ineffective. No one would assume that in a public hospital, patients wouldn’t have to be buying plaster,” the 25-year-old said.
Ogunrinde said she sometimes worked 72-hour shifts, attending to patients despite being tired and running the risk of making costly mistakes. Last year, she quit her job and now works as an administrator at a Lagos-based hospitality firm.
Experts say doctors need to be in optimum physical, mental, and psychological state to be able to save lives, but an increased workload and lack of an enabling environment have made that difficult.
“Nigeria has never had an adequate number of doctors, and the recent challenge of brain drain has further worsened the situation,” said Professor Tanimola Akande, a consultant community health physician at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital. “This will certainly worsen our already bad health indices. Patients’ patronage of quacks and other unreliable places has increased.”
To discourage doctors from fleeing the country, a member of parliament recently proposed that newly inducted doctors practise for a mandatory period of five years in Nigeria to get a licence.
Critics of the government say this will be ineffectual. Instead, they want to see more political will from the government, to ameliorate the situation.
An upgrade of existing facilities and introduction of competitive benefits will boost job satisfaction for medical personnel, said Chinye-Nwoko.
“Prioritising safety by maintaining equipment, and implementing safety protocols is vital to prevent accidents and promote a safer work environment. By taking these steps, the government can help keep doctors in the country … and improve healthcare for all citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable,” she said.
In Lagos, Aifuobhokhan joined other doctors to observe a candle procession in honour of their colleague, days after her passing. She too is leaving her job, to avoid deja vu.
“Now I know for sure I do not want to practise,” she told Al Jazeera. “I don’t want to be in the four walls of any hospital saving lives and then dying where I am saving lives.”
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Nigeria has reversed its recent decision to ease COVID-related health protocols for travelers, and now demanding proof of vaccination from all people coming into the country. This comes barely a month after the government lifted many travel restrictions.
Nigeria has strengthened preventive measures at entry points following an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Uganda, said health authorities on Monday.
In a statement, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said that it has scaled up screening of passengers returning from Uganda at airports and cautioned Nigerians against embarking on non-essential travel to Uganda for now.
The warning is to enable health authorities to determine how the Ebola outbreak will be contained, said Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the NCDC.
"Travellers to Nigeria with recent travel history to Uganda or people already in Nigeria but with recent travel history to or transit through Uganda within the past 21 days are to look out for symptoms," said Adetifa.
Travellers with symptoms including fever, muscle pain, sore throat, diarrhoea, weakness, vomiting, stomach pain, or unexplained bleeding or bruising should promptly call the health authorities for assessment and testing, said Adetifa.
"Such people should not visit health facilities by themselves to avoid further spread through the shared transport system," said Adetifa.
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The Chairman of Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in Oyo State, Wale Lasisi, has called on the government to give doctors incentives to mitigate the issue of brain drain bedeviling the health sector.
Mr Lasisi made the call in Ibadan on Tuesday at the opening of the 2022 Physicians’ Week, with the theme: “Nigeria’s Healthcare Delivery System and the 2023 Democratic Transition: A Time to Change the Narrative.”
He said the problem of brain drain had been on since 1960, as many people leave the country on a daily basis.
“In those days, the pattern was people training abroad and coming home to practise.
“As things degenerated over time, many people who have been exposed abroad ran back while those who have had the opportunity of training abroad also ran back when they saw the quality service there.
“UK is trying to replace its own workforce and make sure its people get the best of healthcare, thus coming down to Third World nations in Africa, including Nigeria, to recruit medical personnel.
“In the immediate future, the best that the government can do is to add incentives to retain those who are on ground,” Mr Lasisi said.
In his lecture, Vice-Chancellor of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun, Ayodeji Agboola, advised those contesting for one position or the other to put the issue of healthcare in the front burner.
“We have heard several promises from 1960 till when the civilian rule started in 1999.
“So much legislation had also been made and we have heard that they wanted to develop primary healthcare but we have not seen any significant improvement.
“My advice and plea to all of them is to make sure that they put primary healthcare into focus,” Mr Agboola said.
Fola Adeniji, of University College Hospital, Ibadan, said if the brain drain trend should be allowed to continue, the country would be at the risk of having a collapsed health system.
“For every physician trained in Nigeria, government must have spent an average of N3.8 million, which is equivalent to $10,000.
“So if that individual decides to leave the country, that means the country will be losing investments in that individual,” Mr Adeniji said.
In his opening remarks, the Chairman of the event, Akinyinka Omigbodun, described doctors as endangered species, as many of them were leaving for other places, with the few remaining already overwhelmed with the number of patients.
Mr Omigbodun urged the association to bring together policy makers and stakeholders to implement policies that would benefit the sector.
In his goodwill message, the Chief Medical Director of UCH, Jesse Otegbayo, noted that the nation’s healthcare system had suffered a lot, especially in terms of poor allocation of resources to the sector.
He, however, said this year’s budget had given the sector the highest allocation, for the first time in many decades.
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Nigeria suffering from medical brain drain
The Kaduna State Chapter of Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, yesterday said no fewer than 10,000 doctors left Nigeria for the United Kingdom, UK, for greener pastures in the last seven years, saying Doctors in Kaduna State are the least remunerated.
The NMA while celebrating its ‘2022 Physicians’ Week’ lamented continued brain drain in the medical profession in the last seven years, amidst deadly deceases in the country that required more medical doctors.
At a news briefing as part of activities to mark the ‘Physicians’ Week’, the Chairman, Kaduna State NMA, Dr. Madaki Sheyin, said a Nigerian doctor is poorly paid, over worked, lacked necessary work tools and has become a target for kidnappers.
“Nigerian doctors have been rendered unimportant by successive governments for inadequate attention to the heath sector.
The one week medical activities has the theme, “Nigeria’s Healthcare Delivery System and The 2023 Democratic Transition: A Time To Change The Narrative’, is in tandem with the most important upcoming event in Nigeria while the sub-themes’, Mitigating The Impact Of Brain Drain On The Dwindling Human Resource For Health In Nigeria and Health Sector Reforms In The Face Of Emerging Public Health Threats’, were chosen as continued reminder to our governments that things are falling apart in the health sector.
“The issue of progressive depletion of human resource for health cannot be over emphasized. With the recent article from an Online Newspaper of 9th October 2022 titled “200 Nigerian Doctors Move to UK in One Month’, the fact that checks on the website of the General Medical Council, GMC, the body which licenses and maintains the official register of medical practitioners in the UK, showed that the GMC licensed at least 200 Nigerian-trained doctors between August 31, 2022, and September 30, 2022 was revealed.
“The statistics also showed that between January 1, 2022 and September 30, 2022, about 1,307 doctors trained in Nigeria were licensed in the UK as Nigeria continues to battle one of the worst situations of brain drain in its history. Overall, 10,296 doctors who obtained their degrees in Nigeria currently practice in the UK.
“Dispersion of the emigration data for Nigeria trained doctors to UK is as follows: 233 in 2015, 279 in 2016, 475 in 2017, 852 in 2018, 1,347 in 2019, 833 in 2020 in spite of COVID Pandemic and 932 in 2021 during recovery from COVID.
“The Kaduna Doctor is even worse hit by this poor welfare conditions, doctors in the State’s employ as at today receive only 60 percent of the CONMESS salary scale, a far cry from what those in the Federal and other States are receiving. We call on our Governments to quickly declare emergency action in Nigeria’s health sector for the sake of her citizens”.
“This alongside insecurity is largely responsible for the high turnover of doctors in the state and mass exodus causing both internal and external brain drain”.
The doctors therefore appealed to Kaduna state government to immediately implement the report of the Committee on Review of Medical Doctors and other health workers’ salaries in Kaduna State and also domesticate the newly approved hazard allowance for doctors.
By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo
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Nnamdi Nwaogu, a 44-year-old IT worker, has packed his bags. In Lagos, Nigeria's frenetic commercial capital, galloping inflation and a plunging naira have pummeled his salary.
Nwaogu, like hundreds of other Nigerians, left amid a brain drain that is punishing even for a nation used to losing its young and educated.
"We have serious doubts if this is the time for that hope to blossom," he said before flying to the UK last month.
Nwaogu began a master's degree in England, while his wife, a doctor, will join him in January with their three children.
Departing workers are impacting nearly every sector, stretching a weak healthcare system, forcing employers to recruit on a continuous basis and worsening services from banking to tech.
The phenomenon -- dubbed "japa," meaning "to flee" in Yoruba -- regularly trends on social media. Many cite unprecedented nationwide insecurity, inflation at a 17-year-high and a loss of faith in leaders before the February 2023 presidential election.
"We are witnessing an epidemic of brain drain," said Dr Dare Godiya Ishaya, president of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).
Ishaya said comparatively low pay, workplace assaults and lack of safety – 20 NARD members have been kidnapped this year -- were all reasons members left.
A NARD poll showed that nearly 800 resident doctors had left this year, while 85% of its leadership were planning to leave. The result is hours-long waits at hospitals, he said, doctor burnout and deteriorating care.
Real-time nationwide statistics on those leaving are not available. But British government data showed a 300% increase in Nigerians getting UK work visas in the year to June, to 15,772.
Others are going to Canada, Australia and the United States.
The exodus lead a banking industry group to release a study last month on ways to retain workers, while tech firms such as Yellow Card Financial, a cryptocurrency exchange, told Reuters they had started offering stock options and pay in dollars.
"The competition for talent is only going to get more and more intense," said Yellow Card chief executive Chris Maurice.
The pull from countries grappling with their own worker shortages is aiding the exodus.
One Nigerian accountant who moved to the UK in May said it took her just three months to get offers from two of the Big Four accounting firms; her company, she said, recently doubled its referral fee to 1,000.
Lagos-based consultancy SBM warned that the loss of skilled labour was bound to have a negative economic impact.
For Nwaogu, there is no choice.
"I want to be able to give my children a better quality of life," he said. "I can't get that here."
By Libby George
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Video - Low wages, and lack of infrastructure leading to a "brain drain" in Nigeria's IT sector
