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Educated and Less Educated Caregivers: A Study on Cervical Cancer

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Image Credit: ChatGPT There’s a disease called cervical cancer, and it can seriously harm women. A vaccine called HPV helps protect girls from getting it when they grow up. In Nigeria, some adolescent girls are receiving this vaccine, but not all. I just finished reading a recently published study on awareness, misinformation, and uptake of the HPV vaccine in Nigeria. The researchers, Sohail Agha & Ifeanyi Nsofor , sampled three states: Abuja, Adamawa, and Nassarawa. The findings were interesting. Caregivers with little or no schooling were more likely to see HPV vaccine ads online and were more likely to vaccinate their daughters. For instance, almost 9 out of 10 girls whose caregivers had no schooling received the vaccine. On the other hand, more educated caregivers - those with college or postgraduate degrees — were less likely to see the ads and less likely to vaccinate their girls. Only about 4 out of 10 girls with postgraduate caregivers got the vaccine. Normally, you’d ex...
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CHIPS: Connecting Communities to Primary Health Care Facilities in Nasarawa State

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Twice a month, Mary Jacob, a Community Engagement Focal Person (CEFP), conducts supportive supervision of 35-year-old Afinnaki Ibrahim, a  Community Health Influencer, Promoter, and Services  (CHIPS) agent in Kafin Shanu ward in Karu Local Government Area (LGA) of Nasarawa State. Jacob monitors the agent’s engagement with pregnant women and children under five, resolves non-compliance issues, and ensures quality community data capture. She is one of the 116 CEFPs and 116 community health extension workers (CHEWs), supervising and supporting 580 CHIPS agents in 52 selected wards across all 13 local government areas (LGAs) in Nasarawa State. The 52 host communities were selected based on their  maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) indicators , accessibility, state of Primary Health Centre functionality, and ward development committee (WDC) willingness to foster grassroots support and participation, said Dr Madawa Absolum, Director of Community and Family Health Servic...
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Skills: What today’s Mothers Must Know and Why Boys Must Wake Up

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  Last week, while on phone with Malama, my mother discussing the kids – my brothers, she told me something that amazed me about her friend, Mallama Hama. Recently, my mother said, Malama Hama paid a sum of ₦20, 000 for her son to learn “Computer Studies” at a Business Café cum learning center for a period of one year at the end of which however little the boy learn, he’ll be given a certificate to leave. Now, I know some of you might be thinking what’s there if a mother paid such money for her kid. Well, this isn’t like any financially buoyant mothers you know. She’s an Arabic school teacher whose only four-month salary that I know can add up to the said amount. She’s one of the most hardworking mothers I know, doing everything they can to make the lives of their children and of others in their community meaningful even before the death of her first husband. She earned my respect since I was in primary school for her intrepidness and thirst for knowledge. Once my mother’s studen...
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A Quest to Unveil the Spiritual World

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Growing up in the community where I grew up, like many children, I was in the company of half-learned and unlearned friends. In this company, I was told two processes that will unveil the world of the "unseen" to my human eye. I tried one of the two processes both of which requires no visiting the sorcerer or a voodooist to be completed. Starting with the one I couldn't try, it has to do with getting abundance riches. And I can only remember a bit of the processes. One was waking up in the middle of the night, naked, under no roof, uttering some words like a pastor speaking in tongues. (Cannot remember a single word but they're like summon.) The result? I was told a very huge and scary creature - jinn - will descend from the sky and ask me a couple of questions. If I am not frightened by all the scary things he'll do and say, the jinn will give me all that I asked (riches) else, I will be doomed from the minute I show a sign of trepidation. And he'll ascend la...
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In The Midst of Rumors: Kano State’s Response at the Onset of COVID-19 Pandemic

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In response to the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaration of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEOIC) in January 2020, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) organised a 2-day simulation exercise for states on the outbreak response in Abuja.  On February 27, 2020, the first day of the exercise, Nigeria confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in Lagos, making it the  first confirmed case  in sub-Saharan Africa and the third on the continent  after Egypt and Algeria . “ On the next day of the exercise we found no one in attendance except a few of us because most of the major stakeholders have been deployed to Lagos for a cogent response ,” says Dr. Bashir Lawal Muhammad, the Kano State Epidemiologist and representative in the simulation exercise. “ The preparedness in Kano State started even before Nigeria recorded any case of COVID-19.  But with the first case through Lagos, we even became more v...
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