Head Of Service Advises Association To Counsel Young Nigerian Doctors

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September 13, 2022

The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan has advised the Nigerian Medical Associations, NMA, to ensure that young resident doctors seeking greener pastures abroad are counseled.

Yemi-Esan gave the advice while responding to a demand by the Association for increased hazard allowances when it paid her a courtesy visit, in Abuja.

She stressed the need for them to be reminded that it is not a bed of roses out there and that the Nigerian government has done a lot for them by sponsoring their education.

Dr. Yemi-Esan noted that the rate at which resident doctors travel abroad to practice without serving the country is a cause for concern.

According to her, ”the Nigerian Medical Association is a good platform to counsel them, saying the Nigerian Doctors, abroad are underpriced when compared to their counterparts from other countries due to their large numbers.”

The Head of Service, however, enjoined them to be reasonable and considerate in their demands, having in mind the dwindling government revenue and most importantly, value addition to the polity.

The President of the Association, Dr. Uche Ojinmah, commended the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan for her reformative contributions to repositioning the Federal Civil Service for greater performance and national economic growth.

Scores hurt in stadium crush as Kenya inaugurates president

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Henry Williams

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September 13, 2022

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Scores of people were crushed and injured as Kenyans on Tuesday forced their way into a stadium where William Ruto is being inaugurated as president.

A medic said a fence at the Nairobi stadium fell down after people pushed it and about 60 were injured, though the number may rise.

“We had to treat some with minor injuries. Most of them were rushed to the main hospital in Nairobi,” Peter Muiruri said. There were no reports of deaths.

People tried to dodge baton-wielding security forces. Some failed. “I was beaten by the police after trying to get inside,” said one witness, Benson Kimutai.

Ruto narrowly won the Aug. 9 election in East Africa’s most stable democracy over longtime opposition figure Raila Odinga, and the Supreme Court last week rejected challenges to the official results.

Ruto is taking power in a country heavily burdened by debt that will challenge his efforts to fulfill sweeping campaign promises made to Kenya’s poor.

Ruto has been the deputy to outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta but had a bitter split with Kenyatta that left the two not speaking for months at a time. Kenyatta on Monday publicly congratulated Ruto for the first time on his win.

With the transition, Kenya’s presidency moves from one leader indicted by the International Criminal Court to another. Both Kenyatta and Ruto were indicted over their roles in deadly 2007 post-election violence, but the cases were later closed amid allegations of witness intimidation.

King Charles in Belfast, queen’s coffin to return to London

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Henry Williams

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September 13, 2022

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King Charles III flew to Northern Ireland on Tuesday on the latest leg of his tour of the four parts of the United Kingdom, where a cheering crowd gathered to greet him in a region with a contested British and Irish identity that is deeply divided over the British monarchy.

In the latest outpouring of affection since Queen Elizabeth II’s death last Thursday, hundreds of people lined the street leading to Hillsborough Castle, the royal family’s official residence in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast. The area in front of the gates to the castle was carpeted with hundreds of floral tributes.

Charles and his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, got out of their car to greet villagers — waving to the cheering crowd and sometimes using both hands at once to shake the mass of outstretched hands from people including schoolchildren in bright blue uniforms.

Anger over past, indifference meets queen’s death in India

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Henry Williams

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September 13, 2022

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Just hours before news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death spread, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a fiery speech urging India to shed its colonial ties in a ceremony to rename a boulevard that once honored King George V.

Rajpath, formerly called Kingsway, was a “symbol of slavery” under the British Raj, he said. Instead, under the newly named Kartavya Path that leads to the iconic India Gate, “a new history has been created,” Modi beamed.

His speech last Thursday was the latest in a concerted drive to purge India of its colonial relics. It was also a clear sign that the country, once the largest of Britain’s colonies that endured two centuries of imperial rule, has moved on.

The renovated avenue now boasts a black granite statue of Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, in the place where a mold of King George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather, once stood.

The queen’s death provoked sympathies to a deeply respected figure from some while for a few others, it jogged memories of a bloody history under the British crown. But among most regular Indians, the news was met with an indifferent shrug.

US leaders avoid victory dance in Ukraine combat advances

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Henry Williams

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September 13, 2022

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U.S. leaders from President Joe Biden on down are being careful not to declare a premature victory after a Ukrainian offensive forced Russian troops into a messy retreat in the north.

Instead, military officials are looking toward the fights yet to come and laying out plans to provide Ukraine more weapons and expand training, while warily awaiting Russia’s response to the sudden, stunning battlefield losses.

Although there was widespread celebration of Ukraine’s gains over the weekend, U.S. officials know Russian President Vladimir Putin still has troops and resources to tap, and his forces still control large swaths of the east and south.

Ukraine piles pressure on retreating Russian troops

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Henry Williams

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September 13, 2022

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Ukrainian troops piled pressure on retreating Russian forces on Tuesday, pressing a counteroffensive that has produced major gains and a stunning blow to Moscow’s military prestige.

It was not yet clear if the Ukrainian blitz in the northeast after months of little discernible movement could signal a turning point in the nearly seven-month war. But the country’s officials were buoyant, releasing footage showing their forces burning Russian flags and inspecting abandoned charred tanks. In one video, border guards tore down a poster that read, “We are one people with Russia.”

Momentum has switched back and forth before, but rarely with such a big and sudden swing, and the Kremlin struggled to respond to the defeat, its largest since its forces abandoned a botched attempt to capture Kyiv early in the war.

Late Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his troops have retaken more than 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 square miles) — an area more than twice the size of Luxembourg — in a matter of weeks.

Sept 12: Exchange Rate for USD to NGN

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Angel Gimalo

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September 12, 2022

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Below you can see the chart for the Nigerian Naira rate today compared to the Dollar.

1 USD = 423.6097 NGN
1 Dollars = 423.6097 Nigerian Naira
The USDNGN rate as of 12 Sep 2022 at 11:29 PM

‘Over 90% of successful Surgical Operations depend on Anaesthetic Services’

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Cleopatra Okohai

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September 12, 2022

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A Consultant Anaesthetist, Dr. Seyi Oyesola, says that over 90 per cent of successful surgical operations depend on inputs and services from anaesthetic medicine.

Oyesola, the Chief Executive Officer of Anaesthesia and Critical Care Consultants (A3C), said this during a visit by the anaesthesia team to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.

Anesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical purposes.

An anaesthetic is a drug or agent that produces a complete or partial loss of feeling.

Oyesola said that anaesthetics and critical intensive care units played vital roles in preoperative care evaluations to aid medical surgery procedures and operations.

He explained that preoperative evaluations comprised all the medical services given to a patient before, during, and after a surgical operation, which would pave the way for the success of the surgery.

He added that the three major components of anaesthetic services included reversible sleep, mobility of the patient, and pain relief.

The consultant emphasised that it was the anaesthetist that puts the patient to a sleep for the surgical operation to take place and wakes him/her up after the surgery.

Oyesola noted that an anaesthetist also provides others postoperative care in the intensive care unit; which involves constant observation and monitoring of the patient for the next three when he/she would be fit.

He said that too much anaesthesia could be dangerous as it could make a patient come out of surgery with brain damage, saying that made it pertinent for anaesthetic services to be rendered by only qualified anaesthetic professionals.

According to him, doctors rely on the services of anaesthetists and intensive care units to arrive at successful medical procedures and treatments.

“More than 90 per cent of patients with successful surgical operations are managed based on anaesthetic medicine.

“In this era of modern medicine, anaesthetic professionals play a foremost role in ensuring that medical procedures and surgeries are successfully carried out.

“It is the role of an anaesthetic scientist to provide the conducive atmosphere for surgery to take place; which includes putting the patient to a reversible sleep, ensuring the patient is alive and mobile during the surgical procedure, and waking him/her up after the surgery.

“The instances where a patient dies during or after surgery can be as a result of wrong administration of anaesthetics.

“Therefore, anaesthetics services must be handled by qualified anaesthetists or intensive care clinicians,” Oyesola said.

Speaking, the Commercial Director of A3C, Mr. Akintunde Sawyerr, decried the lack of awareness and poor recognition of anaesthetic medicine all over the world and particularly in Nigeria.

Sawyerr said that anaesthesia was particularly underserved everywhere in the world as there was no single medical school in the whole of West Africa that trains personnel in intensive critical care.

He, therefore, called for massive awareness and public education on the roles and importance of anaesthesia medicine to human health.

“Anaesthesia or critical intensive care as a specialty of medicine has not been given the right recognition.

“A lot of people do not know that specialty of medicine exists or the role it plays in surgical procedures.

“But the truth is that without anaesthesia or intensive care unit, there will be no successful surgery as a greater percentage of medical operations depend on anaesthesia.

“Unfortunately, many health facilities do not have qualified anaesthetists or proper intensive care units where patients should be kept after surgery for constant observation and monitoring,” Sawyerr said.

500 senior left Nigeria, says medical body

By

Cleopatra Okohai

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September 12, 2022

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The Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria has disclosed that about 500 consultants in various medical fields had left the service of government hospitals for practice abroad due to better conditions of service.

The association’s President, Dr. Victor Makanjuola, disclosed this while fielding questions from Newsmen shortly after a briefing on the resolution reached at the end of the association’s annual general meeting in Benin.

He blamed the problems in the nation’s health sector on largely unresolved issues by the government, with health care workers leaving the shores of the country in droves for more secure climes with better conditions of service.

“In the last two years, over 500 consultants have left the services of governments’ hospitals for practice abroad. All our government hospitals are consultant-led, which is the global standard practice.

“Now, we lose 500 consultants in just two years and we have found out that those who are more likely to leave are the younger ones,” Makanjuola said.

He said to sustain the system and be able to train the next generation of medical doctors and medical students, the country needed to retain older consultants who are in their 50s and getting closer to their retirement so that they can stay back and train the next generation of doctors and medical students.

“The disaster which brain drain will bring will be doubled because we will lose the younger ones and the older ones will retire about the same time, and unfortunately we will find a medical system without consultants. This will affect the standard of health care given by the hospital,” the association’s President said.

He explained that to address the problem, the government should increase the retirement age for consultants in hospitals from the current 60 years to 70 years.

He added that stakeholders could also tap into medical entrepreneurship, an area that has not been tapped, noting that it had the potential to minimise brain drain and encourage brain gain.

The President lamented that efforts by the government had been inadequate in addressing the challenges in the health sector.

He warned that the union could not guarantee industrial harmony in government hospitals if the demands of the workers were not met in two weeks; urging well-meaning Nigerians to intervene to avert an impending crisis.

King Charles’ Coronation: Historic Environment Scotland To Transport Historic Stone Of Destiny To Westminster Abbey

By

Angel Gimalo

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September 12, 2022

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The historic Stone of Destiny is to be moved from Edinburgh Castle for the Coronation of King Charles.

An integral part of the royal ceremony, the stone is a symbol of monarchy both north and south of the border.

Now held in the Crown Room of the castle, the red sandstone weighing 152kg, which is also known as the Stone of Scone will be transported by a team of experts once the date of the Coronation is known.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES), which manages the castle, will arrange for it to be taken to Westminster Abbey.

The Stone of Scone also known as the coronation stone has been used as a seat for the crowning of new monarchs for hundreds of years.

HISTORY
When Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953 at Westminster Abbey, her throne sat above the stone.

After being a symbol of Scottish monarchy for centuries, it was seized by English forces led by King Edward I in 1296 and taken to Westminster Abbey, where it was built into his throne to show that Edward, known as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, had conquered Scotland.

There it remained for hundreds of years until it was ‘reclaimed’ by Scottish Nationalists in 1950.

On Christmas Day, four Scottish students led a daring raid into Westminster Abbey and brought the stone back to Scotland.

According to historians, the Stone of Destiny is an “ancient symbol” and “sacred object” that was used for centuries in the inauguration of Scotland’s kings. But in 1296, the stone was seized from Scotland by England’s King Edward I and he had it built into a new throne at Westminster.

From then on, it has been used in the coronation ceremonies of English monarchs.

Where does the Stone of Destiny live?
After being stolen by King Edward I in the early 1200s, the Stone of Destiny remained in London’s Westminster Abbey until four Scottish students removed it on Christmas Day 1950.

Three months later, the stone was discovered more than 500 miles away, at the high altar of Arbroath Abbey.

The Stone of Destiny was then taken back to the throne at Westminster Abbey, but four decades on it was officially returned to Scotland where it was kept in the Crown Room at Edinburgh Castle.

In 2020, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced plans to relocate the stone – which is also known as the Stone of Scone – to Perth.

How is the Stone of Destiny linked to King Charles III?
In keeping with coronation traditions, the Stone of Destiny will leave Scotland once more and travel to Westminster Abbey for the crowning of King Charles III.

Afterwards, it will be returned to its home in Scotland, where it is seen as a priceless artefact and visited by more than a million tourists each year.