The lagoon was a vast sea of quicksilver reflecting the golden light of the morning sun. The rising sun appeared in a hiatus between grey floating clouds, which soon sailed in front of it, the reflection on the water vanishing for a few moments. Today, at the first Third Mainland Bridge interchange, instead of taking…
An outbreak of terminological inexactitude
The ongoing pandemic of a respiratory infectious disease known as COVID-19 which started in December 2019 has occasioned an explosion of information and an outburst of myths. This has been described as an infodemic. More interesting to me as an epidemiologist and teacher are the medical and epidemiologic terms that it has introduced into common…
On the train again
Saturday, February 1, 2020 It was the time of the year when the nights were longer than the days. So that, by the time we finished morning prayers, it was usually some minutes past six. There was little time to get home, call Uber and get to the train station early enough to catch the…
Another close shave
January 19, 2020. There was a motorcade ahead of us preventing us from overtaking. One of the vehicles was a police pick-up while the others were black SUVs. The SUVs were full of men in military fatigue wielding guns. They menacingly waived down anybody that tried to overtake them. But their speed was not bad…
To Atlanta again, via Istanbul
Universal Health Coverage – the right thing, the smart thing
One cold evening in 2005 I was with my cousin in Grays, a quiet town in Essex County some 35 km east of London. Glued to the computer screen as was my wont for several hours every day, I was utterly oblivious to my surroundings until I began to hear a barely audible, almost musical…
From compassion and charity to health economics
We learnt more than clinical medicine at the bedside. We also learnt that poverty and ignorance could make people deadly sick. We learnt that illness could also further slide already poor people into deeper poverty. We learnt that a lot of people were suffering from acute and chronic diseases but could not help themselves. We…
Nigeria at 59: we need to rekindle the dwindling patriotism
Individually and collectively, we need to build a Nigeria that our children can be proud of. Some have to start from a point of patriotism and optimism and work to give the rest something to be patriotic and optimistic about.
Walk the Talk and Keep Abuja Clean
We were supposed to gather at the Millennium Park at 7:00 am for the second edition of the Abuja Walk the Talk: The Health for all Challenge – the first edition last year had been part of the celebrations of the World Health Organization’s 70th anniversary and I had missed it. But I didn't get…
Thinking in English, Expressing in another Language
Yesterday morning, as I was preparing to leave for work, I listened to VOA Hausa’s health program Lahiya Uwar Jiki. Na taho - In gaisheki, lahiya uwar jiki Babu mai fushi dake It was a reproductive health topic focusing on highly technical stuff like in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and hormonal therapy. The doctor started…
