Professor Sam Aluko, one of Nigeria's foremost economists has died at the age of 83.

Aluko passed away on Tuesday, in a hospital in the United Kingdom. He died from an undisclosed ailment.

The great economist served as the chairman of the National Economic Intelligence Committee in the late Gen. Sani Abacha regime.

Most renowned for his idea which introduced the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under General Sani Abacha, the late Aluko, who hailed from Ekiti state, graduated with a distinction from the London School of Economics.

He also advised former Ondo governor, Michael Ajasin during the Second Republic.

He was a strong critic of budgets and financial plans of successive governments.

Maryam Abubakar, the wife of the acting Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, is dead.

She died on Monday morning, after a brief illness at a hospital in Kano.

She was buried according to Muslim rites this afternoon.

There are indications that Africa will need at least $12billion from now to 2015 to respond to issues of HIV/ADIS. This amount is $4billion higher than the curent spending in the region.

The hint was given by the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS UNAIDS at the 18th African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, just as a Nigerian scientist, Professor Oluwole Makinde received the 2011 Kwame Nkrumah? award of excellence in science from the African Union .
UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé who disclosed this, urged African governments to embark on a greater share of AIDS investments in their own countries and across the region.

Addressing an audience of Heads of State and Government attending the AU summit, Sidibe said financing a sustainable response to the HIV epidemic in Africa will require home grown and innovative solutions that meet the needs of the African people.

Quoting a new UNAIDS issues brief titled “AIDS dependency crisis: sourcing African solutions, he noted that an estimated two-thirds of AIDS expenditures in Africa come from international funding sources.

Sidibe said, ”Records show that the vast majority of life-saving antiretroviral medicines consumed in Africa are imported from generic manufacturers, while the costs of HIV drug regimens have declined significantly in recent years. They remain high and unsustainable. UNAIDS has therefore insisted that prices for the drugs must be further reduced to reach all people eligible for treatment.

“Africa is too dependent on external resources, especially for the AIDS response. This is a source of great risk and potential instability. The status quo cannot be sustained—it is time for a new development paradigm that is developed and owned by the leaders of Africa”, the executive directir added.

He stressed that the region must begin to develop centers of excellence that could catalyze the local production of high-quality HIV medicines and build Africa’s knowledge-based economy.

There are indications that Africa will need at least $12billion from now to 2015 to respond to issues of HIV/ADIS. This amount is $4billion higher than the current spending in the region.

This hint was given by the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS UNAIDS at the 18th African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, just as a Nigerian scientist, Professor Oluwole Makinde received the 2011 Kwame Nkrumah award of excellence in science from the African Union .

UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé who disclosed this urged African governments to embark on a greater share of AIDS investments in their own countries and across the region.

Addressing an audience of Heads of State and Government attending the AU summit, Sidibe said financing a sustainable response to the HIV epidemic in Africa will require home grown and innovative solutions that meet the needs of the African people.

Quoting a new UNAIDS issues brief titled “AIDS dependency crisis: sourcing African solutions, he noted that an estimated two-thirds of AIDS expenditures in Africa come from international funding sources.

Read more later.

?Fix sanitation; fix diseases is? how experts have summed up? the need for a clean environment and good personal hygiene so as to stop the transmission of communicable diseases, writes WINIFRED OGBEBO.

The cliché that cleanliness is next to Godliness has still not found expression in our society, nay environment.
Yet, scientists hold the view that most sicknesses and deaths could be prevented or kept at bay if our environments were clean.

According to a Water and Sanitation Specialist with the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF), Dr Bisi Agberemi, if you fix sanitation, you can fix some of these child-killer diseases like malaria, cholera and polio on a sustainable basis.

He argued that cholera is high because of poor sanitation and access to improved sanitation facilities in Nigeria, saying, “The brother of cholera is diarrhea. That one kills so fast. If you look at the last survey, the infant mortality rate is about 25 to 1,000 live births and under -five is about 115 to 1,000 live births. These are direct consequences of direct access to poor sanitation facilities and, of course, most of the people affected we can see are children.

There are some records that even say that we might be having about 200,000 deaths annually due to diarrhea diseases. That is a lot and equivalent to a child dying somewhere in Nigeria every three or four minutes. It’s like, you pack a jumbo jet filled with about 550 children and it’s crashing on a daily basis. We don’t place any importance on it because we are not seeing it. As we sit here, every four minutes, a child is dying due to diarrhea. It’s as bad as that, so when you look at it from that perspective, you can see that addressing and fixing the problem of sanitation will actually resolve a lot of these things.”
“We also have the issue of polio. You get polio in very poor sanitation areas. You don’t get polio where you have good sanitation; you get people living with polio when they are living under very poor sanitation conditions.”

Despite repeated calls for improved sanitation and personal hygiene, the sanitation situation in the country is still very poor. According to the National Demographic Health Survey of 2010, only about 31.2 per cent of Nigeria’s population has access to improved sanitation, while the rest use all manner of sanitation.?

?? Nigeria is not doing well in the areas of access to improved sanitation, the UNICEF specialist says, “Again, when we say improved sanitation facilities, there are delineations for it because, globally, sanitation has been classified to either improved facility or unimproved sanitation facility, shared facility for open defecation. So when you take improved sanitation facilities, these are facilities that ensure that human beings do not have contact or hygienic separation from human excreta. So, we say its improved sanitation facility. Of course, if it’s otherwise, it’s unimproved and if it’s open defecation, there are times you do it either in the field or onto the surface water. When you talk about access to improved sanitation, we are just concentrating on the people in Nigeria, who have access to improved sanitation facilities.
”
According to the UNICEF specialist, sanitation is a very broad term. But within the context which he works, he says, “When you address sanitation, it refers essentially to human excreta disposal and management, but that is not to say that there are no other components. There are several other components like food sanitation. There are a lot of issues that have to do with sanitation in very broad terms but for the purpose of impact on intervention and monitoring, when you talk of sanitation, you’re, in most cases, referring to safe excreta disposal and management.”

? Furthermore, he says, “in Nigeria, when you use the data we have, like the NDHS of 2010, about 31.2 per cent of Nigeria’s population have access to improved sanitation while the rest use all manner of sanitation. This tells you that the situation is not really good. Again, when you look at it from the urban and rural dichotomy, of course, you have more problems in the rural communities than in the urban”

In the view of Dr. Ignatius Adeh, a researcher, Centre for European Environmental Law and Research, Faculty of Law, University of Bremen, Germany, the country needs to adopt a holistic and integrated approach.

He explained, “look, what we have here is malaria pandemic. If you look at the statistics on malaria related deaths which I believe you have yourself, every thirty seconds, a child dies in Africa, killed by malaria. An estimated 300 to 500 million cases each year cause 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths, more than 90% are children under 5 years of age in Africa. The countries where they have reduce malaria sickness are those countries that enjoy relatively clean environment, Eritrea, Komoros Island, and some Southern African countries. These are countries that have very low malaria deaths because they have relatively stable policy on environmental sanitation and malaria prevention. I’m not saying mosquito net is not a good idea but we must combine it with a good sanitation and fumigation systems.”

“That means not just adopting measures at combating the mosquitoes alone, but also integrating techniques to deal with their habitation. The only way to do that is through a combination of environmental sanitation and malaria prevention measures. Anything short of this approach would be like pursuing one’s own shadow. Look, you need to ensure their inability to procreate by eliminating their habitation through better sanitation for those areas particularly slum areas and poor neighbourhoods that need them.”

According to him, it is senseless setting targets without putting in place relevant strategies to meet set objectives and that if the country is serious about reducing/eliminating malaria deaths,it? must adopt adequate and achievable measures.

“So far, the mistake that`s been made again and again is the idea of thinking that one can fight malaria by making a cocoon of net around oneself without taking care of the environment.

In Nigeria, the mass number of people particularly the high-risk group (pregnant women and children) are right now as we speak in market places/schools/health centres/play grounds. Go to markets in places like Kubwa, Nyannyan, Maraba, Karu, Gwagwalada, Jikoyi, etc, these places are without mosquito nets. Even those of us who can afford mosquito nets around our windows and doors still battle with it because these flying tiny things gain entrance through open doors and sometimes through the so-called mosquito nets into the house.”

He noted that policy makers are aggressively? advocating the use of mosquito nets, yet, adopting preventive measures is better than curative. Nevertheless, he says, “They go about pursuing smokescreen systems that have obvious limitations. Prevention through environmental fumigation and promoting better sanitation in high risk areas is the answer. You can kill the mosquito itself, what about the eggs, larvae and pupae?”

“I think the best way to fighting malaria in the country is to adopt a holistic and integrated approach: environmental sanitation and fumigation. The idea of promoting mosquito net and malaria drugs when we know that children who go to school do not wear mosquito net, adult who go to work and public places do not wear mosquito net, when you are relaxing outside your home, you don’t wear mosquito net. Mosquito nets are only a bedtime story which lasts only six to eight hours.”

?While 2012 was set as a deadline? for Nigeria? to eradicate the wild polio virus, the country has continued to witness upsurge in? the virus with 56 cases already reported . In this interview with WINIFRED OGBEBO,? Dr Abdullahi? Bulama Garba, North–West Coordinator, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA),talks on the responsibility of parents and political leaders towards achieving this feat.

WHY IS THERE AN UPSURGE WHEN WE WERE ALMOST ERADICATING POLIO? TWO YEARS AGO?

?When you are close to defeating your opponent and you relax, your opponent will gather strength and come back.? In 2010, God so kind, in support of the present Minister of State for Health, Dr Muhammad Ali Pate, we got the full involvement of the traditional rulers of all the states. A committee was even set up. This committee really worked, involving every emir and mobilized all district heads as well as religious leaders. So the involvement of those people really helped us and that was why we had up to 98 per cent success in polio eradication efforts in 2010. It’s not that they have relaxed but, honestly, there must be a gap somewhere for that to have happened. In 2011, it was due to several factors like immunization fatigue, non- compliance, logistics and, especially, the poor commitment from the local government. They need to tighten their belts because this programme is everybody’s work. The federal government with partners supplies all the vaccines, pays all the personnel, including me, and all the vaccinators. They pay the logistics effortlessly. The only thing needed from the states and local governments are supervision and provision of pluses – biscuits, sweets, etc. Something that will add value to their health and at the same time attracts the mothers and the children to the immunization point. Not only that, sometimes if the resources are there and there are no eyes to watch over how they are utilised, this is contributing to the problem. Take for instance, if election comes, everybody comes out. When it comes to immunization, the children are more vulnerable than election because they are the future leaders. So we need to protect them.

? Most of our states and local government do not come out to supervise and make sure that our children are at immunization points. They leave the work for us and you know the vaccinators are not directly under us so we cannot punish them even if they misbehave. We don’t pay them salary so the worst we can do is to sack them and by then the damage has already been done. So what we are saying is that those that are directly supervising them on their routine services should pay more attention. That is one big gap we are having and that is why we have these setbacks. In Kano State in particular, I can say with even these number of cases, I feel comfortable in terms of the commitment I have seen in the government.

?

MOST OF THE COMMUNITIES ARE HOLDING GOVERNMENT TO RANSOM BY DELIBERATELY REFUSING TO IMMUNIZE THEIR CHILDREN. WHAT IS YOUR TAKE?

That is one of our headaches. These excuses they are giving are not acceptable . One cannot say, one cannot take care of one’s child because ordinarily if they are sick, you must take them to the hospital. Then why are they denying these children? Is it because these children are innocent, they cannot speak? Many at times, these parents that are denying their children immunization are members of the opposition. If you find out, its either they have grudge with their chairman or elected House member. You know the cliché that when two elephants fight it’s the ground that suffers. This is most unfortunate and one we cannot accept. In health, we have not started using force like in other countries but I don’t know because if this persists, something has to give because the world cannot continue watching as the country remains the only one battling the virus after investing so much. It’s so embarrassing. Meanwhile, those people refusing, follow them on hajj when they are going to Saudi Arabia, they must vaccinate themselves as demanded by the airport authorities.? However, this part of the country has history of sceptism generally. When western education came then, people were rejecting going to school, same thing with fertilizer and now they are begging for them.

?These 16 children infected with the wild polio virus were the ones that did not accept the vaccine and now the parents are regretting but it’s too late. The signs and symptoms of polio presentation are almost similar to other diseases so a parent cannot tell immediately and it’s the paralysis that will clearly tell you that it was polio. I don’t know of any doctor in the world that reverses paralysis from polio and that is why we are calling on people to come out with their wards for immunization. It is irreversible and it causes permanent disability unlike other preventable diseases, unlike Tuberculosis and measles. That is why we seem to be paying more attention to polio yet people don’t seem to realise this. They are saying-polio, polio, all the time. Yet, the disease eradication is possible because it only affects human being. We don’t have to go chasing animals in the bush, and given the experience of small pox, I strongly believe that we can eradicate another disease like polio. Small pox was even by injection and polio is simply two drops of the vaccine in the mouth. So the ease with which you can give the vaccine, the availability, the proven efficacy of the vaccine, and the fact that the disease is irreversible are the reasons why we embark on polio eradication. We are scientists, we don’t work on assumptions so we are calling on people to cooperate. I have never heard of any government in the world that would deliberately set out to destroy its people. If a government eradicates its people, who will it govern?? So government policies are always good . That is why we health workers and religious leaders hardly frown our faces. We don’t fight people. We feel that if somebody is not accepting medication, maybe the information is not enough to convince the person so we’ll keep on talking because that is our training. There were many places our vaccinators were chased out.? In fact, some were even beaten but with education they have come to regret and apologise. I feel that with time, they would come to their senses.

?

WHAT STRATEGIES ARE YOU PUTTING IN PLACE TO ENSURE WE ERADICATE POLIO THIS YEAR?

It’s not only coordinators’ work alone. If it were, I would have done it since.? So it’s me and you. What are we going to do to ensure that we eradicate polio? What I believe is that for every problem, a local solution is always good. If a challenge arises in a place, don’t be annoyed, go there and find out why and you would realise that that challenge is due to one thing or the other. So we are trying to sort of empower the states and the local governments and that is why we are looking for their commitments.

Let them identify the challenges, they may not be able to solve them but let them identify them. I cannot have a generic solution for the whole zone or for the whole country because every community has its own peculiarities.

We are going to have a stakeholders’ meeting which include commissioners for health to review everything. I believe it’s achievable.

?Routine immunization is routine based. It’s to ensure that a child before s/he reaches one year, the mother is supposed to take him or her to health facility five times in order to get all the vaccines. The immunization has to be in the health facility because you cannot carry injections and various types of vaccines from house to house so we expect people to go to the health facilities to receive those vaccines. It’s because the routine immunization is a bit weak that is why we have this supplemental. But if it were strong, say 80 per cent routine immunization coverage, our number of SIPDs would have reduced. We seem to be paying more emphasis on SIPDs but it’s not really true, but because of the time frame. It’s the urgency which we are required to eradicate the disease. Supplemental means to give complimentary to the routine so the routine is still the backbone. We have four strategies; strong routine immunization, SIPDs including Mop up and surveillance. So the government is investing a lot but what is the essence if the people do not know the value? For every penny spent, there must be a value for it. We must not waste public funds procuring vaccines and then people don’t go to receive it at the end of the day.? This attitude of everything government is also contributing to the lapses. People should wake up to their responsibilities.

Health workers in the field of Medical Laboratory Science have been called upon to avoid strike action in the course of their duties and to avoid dabbling in politics in the name of unionism.

The minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu gave this advice last weekend in Abuja, while declaring open a national workshop on accreditation of medical laboratories in the country, organized by the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN).

He said that strike action in the sector has grave consequences on the masses and that incessant case of strikes by health officials have worked against Nigeria attaining its goal in the health sector.

While calling for separation of politics from their official duties, he said that the issues of citizens’ healthcare should be paramount in the discharge of their functions.
He said:”Strike is the greatest obstacle to what we are discussing today. To allow another person to die is the worst thing to do, enough of this politics, let’s get down to work.”

According to him, issues of citizens’ healthcare should be paramount in the discharge of their functions, stating that, “To allow another person to die is the worst thing to do, enough of this politics, let’s get down to work.”

He maintained that the workshop was not only important to harnessing potentials for the health sector, but will also “gather the necessary inputs for the improvement of the health services.”

In his opening remarks, the Chief Registrar of MLSCN, Prof. Anthony Emeribe said that given the weak nature of laboratory infrastructure in the country, implementation of WHO accreditation standards remains crucial to the success in the sector.

“This programme has been designed in a stepwise fashion aimed towards offering a gradual process of improvement on the quality management system of laboratories, Nigeria needs to further strengthen laboratory capacity for the purposes of effective health systems and sustainability,” he stated

The workshop? was expected to create sensitization and advocacy systems for effective management process of medical laboratories. The Nigerian Airforce, WHO and other health bodies attended the workshop.

As part of the multi-dimensional approach towards fighting drug counterfeiting, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has decided to deploy some regulatory officers to man the new Mega Drug Distribution Centers built in some parts of the country.

Director General of NAFDAC, Dr Paul Orhii dropped the hint at the International Conference on Drug Counterfeiting organized by USA Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington DC.

A statement signed by the deputy director (Public Relations and Protocol), Abubakar Jimoh made available to LEADERSHIP, noted that the NAFDAC DG who was widely applauded for his ground breaking innovative anti-counterfeiting strategies by participants at the conference, said officers posted to the mega centers will be provided with the hand held drug testing device known as TRUSCAN in order to track down drug counterfeiters.

According to Jimoh, Orhii lamented that over 270 million people in Africa lack access to safe and good quality medicines just as drug counterfeiters have targeted developing countries because of their weak regulatory system and porous borders.
According to him, the Nigerian Open Drug Market will be dismantled once sufficient Mega Drug Distribution Centers are built nationwide.

The Director General observed that distribution of free drugs particularly anti-malarias by international donor agencies will pose serious public health challenge to developing countries in the near future because of current damage to production capacity of local drug manufacturing companies inflicted by freely donated drugs.

His words “What happens when the donor agencies eventually pull out?. Free drugs could reduce drug counterfeiting temporarily, but in the long run it will kill incentive of local drug manufacturers”.

In her opening remarks, the CFR Senior Fellow for Global Health, Dr Laurie Garrett pointed out that drug counterfeiting is growing worse because of globalization but regretted that there is no sufficient data on how worse the problem is.

Dr Garrett explained that shortage of Life Saving Medicines and companies using cheap and low active pharmaceutical ingredients because of profit have compounded drug counterfeiting problem.

The National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) through the support of the Global Fund grant at
the weekend handed over the last 6 of 28 vehicles for community services against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The agency said its part of intensified campaign against HIV/AIDS in rural areas to ensure that the prevalence of the disease is reduced to the barest minimum.

Speaking at the handing over ceremony, the Director General of NACA,Prof. John Idoko said that the services would first be extended to about 12 states based on their present prevalence rates.

The civil societies being supported for the community services, he said include Civil Society on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (CiSHAN), Civil Society in Malaria Control, Immunization and Nutrition (ACOMIN) and
Civil Society for Eradication of Tuberculosis in Nigeria (The TB Network).

He said: “We need to take our services to where it is needed most. HIV/IADS does not only reside in Abuja alone, we need to go to the various communities. We need to move and decentralize to rural communities.”

“We also want to address the elimination of mother to child. So many women are pregnant and HIV/AIDS positive and are passing this virus to their children. This is not acceptable. We are working very hard on that and I believe these vehicles will be also used for that.”

Six children were killed in a fire on Friday in Dagoni village, Kaita local government area of Katsina State.

A relation of one of the deceased, Malam Danjuma Mohammadu, said on Saturday in Dagoni that the inferno occurred at about 4.30 p.m. in a granary, burning the children and a large quantity of grains.

Mohammadu said that the children, whose ages ranged between six and nine, were suspected to have started the fire with matches while trying to catch a mouse.

The fire razed the granary and charred the children to death.

Meanwhile, the entire village has been thrown into mourning, especially since the incident was the first to be recorded there.

The Acting Chairman of Kaita Local Government, Alhaji Sada Abdullahi, visited the village to condole with the bereaved families.

He donated a sum of N20,000 and urged the families to consider the incident as an act of God.

A similar fire on Nov. 16, 2011 killed a mother and her six daughters at Rafukka quarters in the Katsina metropolis.

A reckless driver trying to maneuver his commercial bus from a heavy bonfire by protesters at Ikosi –Ketu area of Lagos killed two peoplw who were on a motorbike.

?An eye witness said the accident occurred when the mass protesters stopped a commercial motorcyclist known as okada who had three passengers on board. The bus driver in an attempt to cross the section of the road barricaded with bonfire crushed the Okada rider and his passenger.

To avert more casualties in the on-going protest that has recorded over 13 casualties across the country, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris has reiterated the need for private medical practitioners and indeed private hospitals in the state to avoid denying – patients especially those with gunshot wounds – medical attention during the strike period.

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The Christian Health Association Of Nigeria(CHAN), has revealed? that the dreaded HIV/AIDS claims more than 2,000 lives of the total population of the country.

This was disclosed by the director of Advocacy of the group, Pastor David Omorebokhae, during a one-day Round Table Discussion between CHAN Mission Health Institute and members of the Benue State House of Assembly,in Makurdi.

The director said? that above the average total of Nigerians especially women die everyday as a result of inadequate? maternal healthcare service delivery in the country and posited that the the ugly situation needed? concerted efforts both from the government? and other philanthropists to curbing the menace.

Omorebokhae lamented some of the associations’ financial challenges and pleaded with? the state and federal governments to consider the plight of the christian health institutions in budgetary allocations? to further facilitate its wide? activities in the provision of proper and adequate healthcare services to those infected with the scourge particularly those in the rural areas.

While responding,the Speaker of the Benue state House of Assembly,Barrister David Iorhemba pointed out the contributions of the state government and assured of the supported of Governor Gabriel Suswam led- administration,which according to him,has provided qualitative healthcare for the generality of the people of the state.

The Speaker, however,expressed concern over the long standing strike action embarked upon by health workers in the state but added that the healthcare sector was too large to be over dependent on government alone,and insisted that building synergies with a christian organization like CHAN would enhance development.

He opined that “no nation prospers without good healthcare services, that is the more reason why we have no reason to fail to accord top priority to health issues in the state.”