FG To Eradicate polio By 2017

    The Federal Government planned to immunise 41 million children against polio before the end of the year as part of efforts to ensure complete eradication of the virus in Nigeria by 2017, Health Minister Isaac Adewole said.
  The minister told newsmen in Maiduguri on Monday that the goal was to ensure that polio was eradicated in Africa by next year.
He said that similar immunisation would take place in neighbouring countries of Niger, Chad , Cameroon and Central African Republic as part of joint effort to ensure the eradication of the virus from
Africa.
He added that “our target is for Africa to be free of polio by 2017.
“We have an elaborate ring fence immunisation that is going to take place not only in Nigeria, but also in Niger, Chad , Cameroon and the Central African Republic.”
He explained that the Federal Government planned to conduct five rounds of immunisation against polio before the end of December.
He said that “in Nigeria, we are planning five rounds of immunisation; we have done one in the immediate area, where we immunised about 800, 000 children.
“We will do another round of four states to 18 states and go back to do another round of 18 states.
“By December, we will have immunised nothing less than 41 million children under five years of age in Nigeria.”
The minister pointed out that the discovery of wild polio virus in Borno was a great setback on the country’s journey toward final eradication of polio, stressing that “we thought that we had overcome polio, un fortunately between July and now, we detected four new cases.
“One case of polio alone is unacceptable, because it is equal to an outbreak.”
He, however, said that the discovery of the virus in the liberated communities from Boko Haram insurgents were was not totally unexpected.
He then commended President Muhammadu Buhari for providing all the support needed in the fight
against polio.
He also commended the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other partners for their support in the anti polio campaign.
He said “we want to thank the WHO, UNICEF and all these organisations for their support and partnership in the fight against polio.”

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Possible Cure for HIV discovered by a british scientist.

A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of  HIV  using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five United Kingdom universities.



The 44-year-old who chose to remain unnamed and anonymous is the first of 50 people to complete a trial of the ambitious treatment, designed by scientists and doctors from five of Britain’s leading universities.

The Managing Director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, UK, Mark Samuels,  said the treatment was the first therapy created to have tracked down and destroyed HIV in every part of the body, including in the dormant cells that evade current treatments.

The scientists told The Sunday Times of London that presently “the virus is completely undetectable in the man’s blood, although that could be as a result of regular drugs.”



However, if the dormant cells are also cleared out it could represent the first complete cure.

Samuels said, “This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

The trial is being undertaken by researchers from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, London, University College, London and King’s College, London.

HIV is so difficult to treat because it targets the immune system, splicing itself into the DNA of T-cells so that they not only ignore the disease, but turn into viral factories which reproduce the virus.

Current treatments, called anti-retroviral therapies, target that process but they cannot spot dormant infected T-cells.

The new therapy works in two stages. Firstly, a vaccine helps the body to recognise the HIV-infected cells so it can clear them out. Secondly, a new drug called Vorinostat activates the dormant T-cells so they can be spotted by the immune system.

A consultant physician at Imperial College, London, Prof. Sarah Fidler, said the new therapy was specifically designed to clear the body of all HIV viruses, including dormant ones.

Fidler said, “It has worked in the laboratory and there is good evidence it will work in humans too, but we must stress we are still a long way from any actual therapy.

“We will continue with medical tests for the next five years and at the moment we are not recommending stopping ART but in the future, depending on the test results, we may explore this.”

Only one person has ever been cured of HIV. He is Timothy Brown, also known as the ‘second’ Berlin patient, who received a stem cell transplant from a patient with natural immunity to HIV in 2008.

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