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Showing posts with label risk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label risk. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

PHSAI youth identifies high risk in adolescents’ sexual behaviour - NaijaAgroNet

The youth arm of the Public Health Sustainable Advocacy Initiative (PHSAI) has attributed the high risk in sexual behaviour among Nigerian adolescents as responsible for the increasing teenage pregnancy, out of school girls, baby dumping, post abortion complication and death, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The Coordinator, Life Planning for Adolescents and Youth at PHSAI Lagos State, Abiodun Ajayi, made this disclosure while addressing participants at World Contraception Day 2019 hosted by the Pathfinder International.

Dwelling on ‘Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health (AYSRH) in Lagos,’ Ajayi noted that despite bold steps taken by the state and some stakeholders to increase young people access to youth-friendly Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services, the upsurge in sexual behaviour remained high.

He called for an urgent need to increase discussion around youth SRH cum family planning issues at all levels.

Ajayi also called for increase in funding to sufficiently meet the SRH-FP need of the high risk sexual behaviour of these rapidly growing young populations.

He identified further lack of adequate access and accurate life planning information and services, stressing that lack of youth friendly health facilities and provider bias as some of the worrisome issues.

Additionally, Ajayi said that poor knowledge of contraceptive options and benefits have been a stumbling block for the youth in the state.

“The Lagos State Youth Policy that could provide some backing to the state response to AYSRH has some significant gaps, especially the target audience which is youth between 18 and 35 years and its focus is more on poverty alleviation and other interventions as appendages,” he told NaijaAgroNet.

Ajayi lamented that though the policy had provision for reproductive health services, “it was not explicit on access to contraceptives or family planning services.”

Further, he proposed there should be an evidence based policy and legislative advocacy for implementation of AYSRH services in Lagos State.

“Enhance partnership with NGOs by the state government to establish youth friendly SRH services,” he said.

The PHSAI youth coordinator, maintained that trainings and supervisory programmes that effectively address medical and personal provider’s biases regarding young people’s use of all available contraceptives should be conducted.

Uj. N. Dominic/Editor

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Wednesday, September 20, 2017

More children at risk as 815m people officially hungry globally

An estimated 815 million globally are hungry, thus risking millions of children at risk from malnutrition, says the United Nations latest findings, reports NaijaAgroNet.

According to UN, after steadily declining for over a decade, global hunger is on the rise again, affecting some 815 million people in 2016, or 11 per cent of the global population, says a new edition of the annual United Nations report on world food security and nutrition made available to NaijaAgroNet.

This is coming as UN said that at the same time, multiple forms of malnutrition are threatening the health of millions worldwide.

The increase - 38 million more people than the previous year - is largely due to the proliferation of violent conflicts and climate-related shocks, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017.

Some 155 million children aged under five are stunted (too short for their age), the report says, while 52 million suffer from wasting, meaning their weight is too low for their height. An estimated 41 million children are now overweight. Anaemia among women and adult obesity are also cause for concern. These trends are a consequence not only of conflict and climate change but also of sweeping changes in dietary habits as well as economic slowdowns.

The report is the first UN global assessment on food security and nutrition to be released following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 as a top international policy priority.

It singles out conflict - increasingly compounded by climate change - as one of the key drivers behind the resurgence of hunger and many forms of malnutrition.

"Over the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more complex and intractable in nature," the heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in their joint foreword to the report. They stressed that some of the highest proportions of food-insecure and malnourished children in the world are now concentrated in conflict zones.

"This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition. Securing peaceful and inclusive societies is a necessary condition to that end," they said.

Famine struck in parts of South Sudan for several months in early 2017, and there is a high risk that it could reoccur there as well as appear in other conflict-affected places, namely northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, they noted.

But even in regions that are more peaceful droughts or floods linked in part to the El NiƱo weather phenomenon, as well as the global economic slowdown, have also seen food security and nutrition deteriorate, they added. 


Isaac Oyimah/GEE 
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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

2017 Nutrition Symposium: 13% Nigerians risk mental deformation

Estimated 13 per cent of Nigerian children risk growing up with mental deformity unless proper iodine is part of their nutrition, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Professor emeritus, Babatunde Oguntona, who gave this indication in Lagos at a one-day Nutrition Symposium on ‘Malnutrition,  Child Development and the Media’ organised by the Media Centre Against Child Malnutrition (MeCAM).

He also called on government to pay greater attention to public health.

“If we don't keep iodine level properly, we'll have 13% of Nigerian children mentally deformed,” Prof. Oguntona said.

Lamenting the situation, Prof. Oguntona imagineed that about 13 percent of parliamentarians are mentally deformed and wondered the kind of policies and legislation.

"Inadequate iodine in our food is a serious threat. You can't talk of development when you ignore the issue of nutrition status of your people,” he declared, rapping the Nigerian authorities for their poor response to the threats of malnutrition.

Oguntona, a former president of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, said between 13 and 18 Nigerian children die of malnutrition and related diseases every hour and called on the media to step up advocacy on the issue.

Ivy Ibiso KingHarry, an associate at the Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network | Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN), said the media have a duty to promote messages on nutrition as influencers and change agents. 

She added however that such media efforts must flow from proper understanding of the science of nutrition and effective delivery of messages in language understood by common people.


She urged reporters to always fact-check and scrutinize official data on malnutrition, be consistent and build trust in their duty as gatekeepers.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

GSK, MMV positive on single-dose tafenoquine reducing malaria risk


The GSK and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) has announced positive results from two phase III studies of tafenoquine, an investigational 8-aminoquinoline, for the prevention of relapse of Plasmodium vivax (P.vivax) malaria, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The headline results, presented today at the International Conference on Plasmodium vivax Research (ICPVR) in Manaus, Brazil, show that a single-dose of 300mg tafenoquine, when given with a 3-day blood-stage chloroquine treatment, reduced the risk of relapse in patients with P.vivax malaria significantly more than placebo when given with chloroquine.

P. vivax is one of several species of Plasmodium parasite known to cause malaria. After an infected mosquito bite, the parasite has the ability to lie dormant in the liver and periodically reactivate causing relapses of P. vivax malaria. These relapses can occur weeks or even years after the initial infection. The disease is estimated to cause around 8.5 million clinical infections every year. Each of these infections keeps a child or adult from school or work for at least 3 days.2 Studies have shown that beyond lost time, malaria can also have adverse effects on cognitive ability.


Since 2008, GSK and MMV have been working together to develop single-dose tafenoquine as an alternative to the existing standard of care, primaquine, which must be taken for 14 days for patients with the relapsing form of malaria. The two phase III randomised, double-blind studies, “DETECTIVE” and “GATHER”, were conducted in malaria-endemic countries covering South America, Asia, and Africa.

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Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Drones assist Philippine farmers prepare for climate disasters

The government of the Philippines in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has started using unmanned aerial drones to assess where farmlands are most at risk from natural disasters and quickly assess damages after they strike, NaijaAgroNet reports.

This, NaijaAgroNet also reports is in a bid to stay ahead of the negative impacts of climate change, floods and typhoons on food security, especially in the Philippines.

In addition, under a pilot phase of the still-fledgling project funded by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Philippines and the FAO, two drones have already been sent soaring over the Philippines provinces that have been affected by the current El NiƱo.

NaijaAgroNet equally reports that some 25 FAO and government technical experts are ready to be deployed across the archipelago to support drone missions. They were recently trained over three weeks on how to fly the drones and learned a range of remote aerial assessment methods.

The drones, NaijaAgroNet reports, are equipped with navigation and photogrammetric equipment that could generate detailed and data rich maps from aerial photographs including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index or NDVIa formula used for assessing vegetation and plant health.

Data gathered, NaijaAgroNet gathered, could be used to see where agricultural systems are at particular risk from natural disasters and identify ways through which such risks can be countered, for example, through ground contouring, building retaining walls, or planting protective vegetation.

Capable of covering up to 600 hectares a day, the drones should significantly accelerate the process of risk analysis, according to Christopher Morales, Director of Field Operations for the Philippines Department of Agriculture.

"It is efficient, it saves time and we will be using a reliable source of data so that we can plan and provide appropriate interventions and responses for our farmers in times of disasters and calamities," he said.

"Additionally, imagery generated from drone flights can reveal where agricultural infrastructure projects and service facilities like irrigation or storage facilities could be sited to best serve local farmers. The technology can also potentially support in the assessment of coastal and forest areas." said Jose Luiz Fernandez, FAO Representative in the Philippines.


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