Health

The German government has donated 150 million Euros to Nigeria to assist the country facilitate total eradication of polio, NAN reports. The Spokesperson, Ministry of Health, Dr. Tiwatope Elias-Fatile stated this on Wednesday at a press conference in Abuja.

A 30 year U.S study reveals that women who practice exclusive breastfeeding for six months or longer appear to significantly curtail the risk of developing type II diabetes.

The Kaiser Permanente research, published in the U.S. journal JAMA Internal Medicine, examined data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA).

The study comprised of 1,238 black and white women who did not have diabetes when they enrolled in CARDIA, or prior to their subsequent pregnancies.

Over the next 30 years, each woman had at least one live birth and was consistently screened for diabetes under the CARDIA protocol.

Babies under five years of age in their thousands continue to die on a daily basis from preventable diseases including malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malnutrition, particularly in third world countries.

Children in Sub-Saharan Africa are ten times more likely to be killed by these prevalent health challenges before the age of five than children in more developed countries.

Despite reasonable progress made on the health of young kids with mortality rate almost cut by half in 2000, millions still hardly get to five.

Two resident doctors serving at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakiliki, FETHA, Ebonyi State, have reportedly died of lassa fever.

The doctors, Dr Ali Felix, a Resident Doctor in the Department of Community Medicine and Abel Sunday Udo, who was a Resident Doctor in the Department of Otorhinolayngology, FETHA, both died on Sunday.

The incident has generated panic particularly amongst other health workers at the hospital where two of the house officers who participated in the treatment of the deceased and other nurses has been added to watchlist.

Socially isolated people may be more likely to develop diabetes than adults with closer ties to family and friends, a recent study suggests.

Loneliness has long been linked to a wide variety of physical and mental health problems, particularly among chronically ill and elderly people. With diabetes in particular, close friends and family can influence how patients eat, how much they exercise, and how well they keep the disease in check.

To see how these relationships may influence the odds of getting diabetes in the first place, researchers examined data on 2,861 adults who ranged in age from 40 to 75 and were 60 years old on average.

More than half of these people had normal blood sugar and no diagnosis of diabetes. But 430 people, or 15 percent, had slightly elevated blood sugar classified as “pre-diabetes,” while about 4 percent were newly diagnosed with diabetes when they joined the study and 24 percent already had the disease.

Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has confirmed the deaths of up to 45 persons in an outbreak of yellow fever in the country which is currently active in states including Kwara, Kogi, Kano, Zamfara, Kebbi, Nasarawa and Niger.