Medicine. Technology. Art.

  I always tell my lover I love the video of the song “1 milli” by Davido. And I use every opportunity I get to see the video to tell my muse the reason while grinning from ear to ear, now you get to read it. That video, like most videos that features a lot of people, typical people not vixens, gives me unfound happiness. You see, it’s about the quality of life, portrayed or otherwise, of those women and men on the screen. You watch the “1 milli” video or “Buga” and some other videos that older adults feature and you must notice that they are jumping with glee, full and natural laughter. At that point in time, music is merging with humanity, nature and health. No thoughts about hypertension, diabetes mellitus or osteoarthritis. The new guy, “Official Starter”, who dances with middle-aged and elderly market women confirms this narrative further. Look at her favourite grandma dancing and trying to perform a choreography and you will notice you are less concerned about the perfection ...

Like most things in Nigeria, medical education is plagued by a lot of factors that affect its excellence. A lot of mitigating circumstances affect this very important subset of the entire Nigeria educational structure which by extension affects the future of healthcare delivery in the nation. Issues ranging from laboratory engagements to research expertise are grossly neglected during the "6+x" years most medical students spend acquiring a medical degree. To highlight a few: Structure of medical exams, Topic presentations, External postings, COBES(Community-based education and service) Didactic lectures, Laboratory skills, Final year projects, And many more. For specificity, this writ will focus on the underperformance and underutilisation of final-year research work in the medical community. In most universities, final-year medical students are expected to produce research work which is almost always in the public health course. I had an amazing experience during my final ye...

Forgive yourself. Nothing lasts forever, it could last for a lifetime and maybe some centuries at best, but forever? Never. How many persons who lived just five hundred years ago are being remembered or taught actively? Less than you can imagine. Even the Isaac Newtons of the past centuries are declining in the number of active lessons being taught about their lives and discoveries they made. Their discoveries are important but are built upon so much that a time comes when people don't even go back to alluding any breakthrough based on their discoveries to them except for the "...stand on the shoulders of giant..." cruise. You can go on and on about people who lived just within the last millennium and are never remembered despite doing so much during their lifetime. Props to philosophers and deep thinkers though, it seems they have a fair share of those who are still remembered maybe because the mind of a man is the most complex thing to ever understand and study. There s...

The burden of cancer is beyond the number of people affected, it is in the plans and dreams it destroys and the beautiful souls it annihilates while darkening the hearts of those who are related to the victims. Like most chronic diseases, many scientists have made it their life-long commitment to improving the prognosis of these cancers. However, I think there is a caveat that is not judiciously utilised, as I would not want to state that it is rarely or never used. And that caveat is collaborative work amongst scientists and their studies. This collaborative work includes labs with their principal investigators (PIs) working together, beyond university or funding scopes, to answer specific questions that can bring humanity closer to finding a cure to this menace. But the biggest bane is the knowledge gap between all that has been done and the next questions that should be answered. PIs, together with their team members, usually have questions they seek to answer based on the volume of...

You only live once! A mantra that most people think gives allowance to spend and be spent with no thoughts for tomorrow and years to come and generations unborn. But look at those words again - You only live once! It can be used to portray the lifestyle of a city big boy, but it can be used by a monk too! You go to a monastery, and see a monk say “Fellow human, you only live once”. You want to take a pause and think deeply about those words, but he is saying the same thing -YOLO! YOLO goes both ways - the debauchery path and otherwise. Try to wash your hand, one of them, without the help of the other. You will do a fairly good job, only that some parts of the eminences and the larger part of the back will not, cannot, be touched and so remain unclean. What to do? Wash your hands with both hands.  Live the two faces of YOLO! Most old people have regrets. I don’t think the goal should be no regrets, but rather little regrets with many sweet memories. Not totally related, you rush to ...

  Kola is really hoping that his barber boss will give him some money so that food will be in his belly tonight. Later in the evening, Tunde walks by the barbershop and sees a boy, surely in his age grade, eating a meal comfortably at his own pace and when he wants to. On the other hand, he has to be at home for the night meal at the dining table where the other members of the family must be at the table. He, amongst other responsibilities, must be clean at the table, and hands washed or else the food will likely be forfeited. Perspectives. Kola needs to literally make a daily income to eat every day. This is not because he is a biological orphan, his folks are alive, they just have many mouths to feed. Tunde is not aware of this childhood turmoil that is Kola’s life, except for the chilling young man who eats alone at the barbershop. What’s spectacular about eating in the dining room every night. A few things come to the fore, but the striking feature, which is rapidly depleting i...