Sammendrag
This issue of African Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences as usual contains very interesting papers. The lead paper is a review article on the Epidemiology, aetiology and management of
childhood acute community-acquired pneumonia in developing countries by Falade and Ayede. This is a commissioned article which looked at the “state of the art” of pneumonia in childhood. It will
hopefully remain a reference article for sometime. The major focus of the paper is how to reduce morbidity and mortality of pneumonia in the African region.
There are 15 other papers, two of these are laboratory based, which are: (a) A comparison of basic and “state-of-the-arts” skills set of biomedical science technical staff in Lagos public universities
and (b) Subclinical hypothyroidism in childhood obesity and its correlation with lipoproteins. The first of these two papers looked at the problem of lack of adequate knowledge of science technical staff on advance biomedical technics and the effect of that on research publication.
Seven (7) papers are community based and at the same time are of public health importance. These are (a) Ocular status of commercial drivers in Osun State. (b) Awareness of anti-malaria policy
and malaria treatment practices of patient medicine vendors in three Nigerian states (c) Effect of peer-education Intervention on secondary school adolescents reproductive health knowledge in Saki Nigeria, (d) Determinants and perception of cardiovascular, risk factors among secondary school teachers in Oyo State in Nigeria. (e) Economic cost of motorcycle injury among crash- involved
commercial motorcyclist in Oyo State, Nigeria. (f) High level parasitic contamination of soil sampled in Ibadan metropolis (g) The peculiar challenges of blindness prevention in Nigeria: a review article. All these papers point out gaps in public health knowledge in the society and need to fill these gaps.
Finally six (6) papers are hospital based. These are (a) “Hybrid” ameloblastoma a report of two cases (b) Nickel chromium brackets and its effect on the oral microflora (c) Asymptomatic
bacteria in pregnancy: Evaluation of reagent strips in comparison to microbiological culture. (d) Excess renal insufficiency among type 2 diabetic patients with dip-stick positive proteinuria in a
tertiary hospital, (e) Changes in the trends in chronic subdural haematoma in Nigeria and (f) Maternal mortality in Niger: a retrospective study in a high risk maternity.
As a matter of fact all the papers have public health importance and in general they continue to point out the inadequacies in health facility and delivery in Africa, especially Nigeria.
O. Baiyewu
Editor-in-Chief