CNS: Articles of Eranga Isaac

Showing posts with label Articles of Eranga Isaac. Show all posts

Cancer kills 80,000 Nigerians every year

Isaac Adewole, Nigeria Health Minister

Eranga Isaac, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
Nigeria marked World Cancer Day 2016, recording a significant increase in the number of deaths from common cancers during the last few years. As per data of the World Health Organisation, between 2008 and 2012, daily number of deaths increased from (i) 30 to 40 in women due to breast cancer; (ii) 24 to 26 in men due to prostate cancer; and (iii) 24 to 32 due to liver cancer. This significant increase is, to some extent, connected to the lack of quality cancer treatment facilities available in the country.

Eranga Isaac, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
The most recently revised estimates of asthma suggest that as many as 334 million people are living with asthma worldwide, and that the burden of disability is high. Asthma is a chronic long term lung condition that is genetic in origin and can be affected by a host of environmental factors.

Isaac Eranga, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
There were an estimated 3.3 million new cases of TB and an estimated 510 000 TB deaths among women in 2013, says the WHO Global TB Report 2014. While TB as a women’s health issue has been largely overlooked, it presents one of the major reasons that TB in women should be taken seriously. Gender inequality around the world makes women with TB particularly vulnerable to stigma. In addition, TB poses a variety of deep threats to women’s lives medically, economically, and socially.

Isaac Eranga, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
Universal health coverage (UHC) means that every person, everywhere, has access to quality health care without suffering financial hardships. Unfortunately, each year 1 billion people cannot afford a doctor, cannot pay for medicines and/or cannot access other essential healthcare services without risking impoverishment.

Eranga Isaac, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
TB is an infectious disease caused by the Mycobacterium TB. While it typically affects the lungs, it can affect virtually any part of the body. TB spreads from person to person through the air when someone sick with the disease coughs, sneezes or spits. Another person needs only to inhale a few of these germs in order to become infected. Key symptoms include cough, fever, night sweats, and weight loss, which can sometimes occur over many months.

Eranga Isaac, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
It has been established by health experts in Nigeria that indoor and outdoor environments are usually polluted by multifarious mixtures of gases and particles that are produced by combustion of various types of fuels. Sources of indoor pollution include cooking stoves, cigarettes smoking, burning of various fuels for indoor heating, burning of mosquito coils and burning of incense for religious purposes and defecating in the living room.

Photo credit: R Dwivedi/CNS

Isaac Eranga, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
Two billion people — one-third of humanity — carry a latent TB infection. The vast majority of those infected latently live their whole lives without becoming sick with TB or spreading the infection. The body’s immune defenses seal the invading TB germs within a tiny capsule at the infection site, thus preventing them from multiplying. When the body’s immunity is compromised, like through HIV, the capsule containing the TB germs weakens and breaks.

Eranga Isaac, CNS Correspondent, Nigeria
As the world marked the World No Tobacco Day 2014, experts cautioned sufferers of diabetes to desist from the use of tobacco, saying it will lead to more complications. Speaking to CNS, Dr. (Mrs.) Omoye Amusa a Consultant at the Stella Obasanjo Hospital, Benin City, Nigeria informed that diabetes is a group of diseases in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal. She added that most of the food a person eats is turned into glucose (a kind of sugar) for the body’s cells to use for energy. The pancreas, an organ near the stomach, makes a hormone called insulin that helps glucose get into the body’s cells.