Health

Southwest Florida Proton has administered its first therapy treatment, becoming the first cancer center on Florida's west coast to offer the highly precise form of radiation therapy. The inaugural treatment, delivered on Dec. 30, represents a significant milestone for cancer care in the region, providing patients with access to advanced technology that previously required hours of travel to Florida's east coast or out of state. Proton therapy uses charged proton particles to target and destroy cancer cells with exceptional accuracy, often minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue and reducing side effects.

The Federal Government of Nigeria has endorsed a new strategic policy that extends the retirement age of qualified clinical healthcare workers from 60 to 65 years, or from 35 to 40 years of service, effective January 1, as part of its efforts to mitigate the shortage of healthcare personnel in federal health institutions.

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has threatened to embark on a nationwide shutdown of medical services, following the failure by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to honor a previously signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the association.

A candidate vaccine against Lassa fever has shown a strong safety profile and encouraging immune responses in a phase 1 clinical trial, raising hopes for a long-sought preventive tool against the viral disease endemic in parts of West Africa. The vaccine, a replication-competent recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-vectored formulation encoding the Lassa virus glycoprotein complex (rVSVΔG-LASV-GPC), was tested in 114 healthy volunteers in the United States and Liberia. Researchers reported no vaccine-related serious adverse events and no cases of hearing loss, a known complication of Lassa fever.

Nigeria's Lassa fever outbreak has spread to 21 states and 103 local government areas this year, with four states, Ondo, Bauchi, Edo and Taraba, accounting for about 89 per cent of all confirmed cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC). Ondo recorded the highest number of infections, followed by Bauchi, Edo, and Taraba.

The African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE), has recorded major clinical breakthroughs with the successful completion of its first open-heart surgery and the delivery of West Africa's first Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) for lung cancer. The world-class tertiary hospital, developed by African Export-Import Bank (Afriximbank) in partnership with King's College Hospital, London, said the open-heart procedure involved a complex Triple Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG). It also disclosed that over the past six months, it has carried out more than 10 cardiac interventions, including coronary angiographies, permanent pacemaker insertions, and percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI).