Surgical pain is an unpleasant sensation that results from a surgical procedure. Pain is caused by the damage done to tissue by the incision, the procedure itself, the closing of the wound and any force that is applied during the procedure. Pain after surgery can also stem from factors that accompany surgery. For example, you may have back pain due…
What is benign prostatic hyperplasia? Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is also called benign prostatic hypertrophy. It’s when the prostate gland becomes very large and may cause problems passing urine. BPH is not cancer, and is a common part of aging. The prostate gland is found only in males. It’s located in front of the rectum and below the bladder. It…
In sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria has the highest number of people with diabetes with an estimated 3.9 million people (or an extrapolated prevalence of 4.99%) of the adult population aged 20-79-year-old. Prediabetes is often considered a transition step to Type 2 diabetes, but with important lifestyle changes Type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed. In all forms of diabetes, the body’s ability to make or properly…
Malaria facts More than 215 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide in 2016. The World Health Organization estimates that 445,000 people died of malaria in 2016; the vast majority are young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Although this is a significant decrease in deaths since 2000 due to increased prevention and control measures, there has been an increase from 2015 to 2016. Health care professionals…
Health workers are at the front line of the COVID-19 outbreak response and as such are exposed to hazards that put them at risk of infection. Hazards include pathogen exposure, long working hours, psychological distress, fatigue, occupational burnout, stigma, and physical and psychological violence. Right now, our healthcare workers are on the frontlines of battling the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19)…
According to a new report by UNICEF and WHO in collaboration with the Global Breastfeeding Collective, a new initiative to increase global breastfeeding rates, no country in the world fully meets recommended standards for breastfeeding. The Global Breastfeeding Scorecard, which evaluated 194 nations, found that only 40 per cent of children younger than six months are breastfed exclusively (given nothing but…
Asthma is described as a respiratory condition marked by attacks of spasm in the bronchi of the lungs, causing difficulty in breathing. It is usually connected to allergic reaction or other forms of hypersensitivity. Asthma (from the Greek άσθμα, ásthma, “panting”) by definition is a disorder that causes the airways of the lungs to swell and narrow, leading to wheezing,…
Hypertension, in Medilexicon’s medical dictionary, means “High blood pressure; transitory or sustained elevation of systemic arterial blood pressure to a level likely to induce cardiovascular damage or other adverse consequences.” According to the Pan African Medical Journal (2012), in addition to the direct costs in form of treatment related costs, there are also indirect costs related to lost man hours and savings…
Researchers now view glaucoma as a disease of the brain — a neurodegenerative disease — rather than simply an eye disease. Recent research has shown that the complex connection between the eye and the brain is an important key to the disease. Glaucoma shares a number of features with degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.…
Until recent times, overcoming the malaria burden had been a tall order for many countries across the world. Within the past decade however four of such countries have been certified by the WHO Director-General as having eliminated malaria. These include the United Arab Emirates (2007), Morocco (2010), Turkmenistan (2010), and Armenia (2011). In 2014, 16 countries reported zero cases of…
