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Reps Committee Seeks Collaboration to Enhance Specialised Healthcare
By Gloria Ikibah
The House of Representatives has called for partnerships to support the implementation of a Legislative Activity Framework aimed at improving specialised healthcare services across the country.
Chairman of the House Committee on Specialty Healthcare, Rep. Alex Egbona, made this appeal during a stakeholders’ roundtable in Abuja on Wednesday.
He highlighted key focus areas for collaboration, including mental and brain health, trauma care, and obstetric fistula treatment. Other priority areas include oral health, ear and eye care, blood transfusion and management, as well as anaemia treatment.
Additionally, Egbona emphwelsed the importance of advancing traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine, alongside innovations in specialised healthcare.
“In the course of our legislative duties and committee activities, we discovered some cross cutting challenges faced by all specialised healthcare providers and institutions in Nigeria.
“They include infrastructural decay, lack of requisite medical equipment, poor electric power source/ supply and poor / inadequate funding.
“The committee sadly notes that the specialised hospitals and healthcare centres serving the nation as referral hospitals on specialised health emergencies are the lowest funded in the health sector budgets.
“The Committee therefore invited you all here today as professionals and experts to review the Draft Legislative Activity Implementation Framework, make your observations, contributions, interventions and inputs on the document,” he said.
Rep. Egbona said that the expected outcome include improved legal and legislative framework for robust legal environment that enables the deployment of secure and efficient e-Health systems.
The reps said that enhanced digital healthcare access, increased adoption of digital health technologies to improve patient outcomes and access to care was expected.
“It seeks Improved Mental/brain Health Services for better allocation of resources to underserved areas and addressing gaps in service delivery.
“It also seeks increased awareness and reduced stigma for greater societal understanding of mental/brain health, leading to reduced stigma and better utilisation of mental/brain health,” he said.
In his remarks, Country Programme Manager of Christian Blind Mission (CBM), Mr. Michael Idah, called for greater attention to be given to the elderly and Persons With Disabilities (PWDs), emphasizing their frequent exclusion from essential services, particularly healthcare.
He stressed the need for stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of the framework, noting that this would prevent the need to restart efforts in the future.
Similarly, Rev. Fr. Sebastian Sani, who is the Executive Director of the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission (JDPC), an agency of the Catholic Church, expressed the commission’s support for the initiative. He reaffirmed the church’s commitment to caring for people with special needs, particularly the underprivileged in society.
“Currently, we have up to 100s of people with disability that as a church, we are paying for their health insurance.
“This gathering and meeting with stakeholders, will further encourage us to do more,” he said.
Sani called for the establishment of Specialty Healthcare Trust Fund that cooperate and private individuals will contribute to in support the sub sector.
The Deputy Chatman, FCT Association of Integrative Medicine Practitioners, Dr Jackie Ikeotuonye called for a regulatory council.
She said that regulation of alternative medicine especially traditionalist who inherit some form of skills from their mentors or parents was imperative.
Ikeotuonye said that there is need to regulate and determine dosage as people are made to drink all sort of concentrated mixtures.
“You see the way the world is moving now, there is need to put some regulations, especially like where a traditionalist is telling you go and pluck some leaves.
“What leave? What Quantity? Who is directing who? Of course, there is been a lot of abuse in that sector, people drinking all manner of our war with different things, killing their kidneys and all that.
“So this is timely, and we strongly believe that part of the outcome of this, what the committee is doing is to ensure that there is a council, which I we are told, is already on the President’s table, waiting for assets,” he said.
The committee gave stakeholders 10 days to further peruse the legislative activity implementation framework and submit memoranda for implementation.
Walmart heiress Alice Walton has emerged at the top on Forbes world’s richest women’s list for the second consecutive year.
According to the latest Forbes World’s Billionaires ranking, the 134-billion-dollar fortune of Walton shows her dominance among female billionaires.
She was first named the world’s richest woman in September 2024, after dethroning L’Oréal heiress, Françoise Bettencourt.
French L’Oréal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers ($100 billion) and Julia Koch, widow of the late industrialist David Koch, followed with $81.2 billion.
Out of 3,428 billionaires listed this year, 481 are women, 14% of the list, up from 406, or 13.4%, last year.
Chilean mining and beverage heiress Iris Fontbona clinched the fourth place with $52.6 billion, surpassing Candy and pet food heiress Jacqueline Mars ($49.1 billion), who fell to fifth. Her rise is particularly notable as she was previously outside the top 10.
Among the top 10 richest women, the only self-made billionaire is Swiss shipping magnate Rafaela Aponte-Diamant ($44.5 billion), who dropped from fifth to sixth place. Overall, just 122 of the 481 female billionaires made their own fortunes, up slightly from 113 last year. The next richest self-made woman is American roofing magnate Diane Hendricks ($22.3 billion).
Beyoncé, the global music superstar, made her debut this year with a net worth of $1 billion.
Other notable self-made women include Rihanna ($1 billion), Spanx founder Sara Blakely ($1.4 billion), and Taylor Swift ($2 billion). Another newcomer is Luana Lopes Lara, a former ballerina from Brazil who co-founded the prediction market firm Kalshi. At 29, she becomes the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, taking the title from 31-year-old Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo ($1.4 billion).
Melinda French Gates ($30.3 billion) and Marilyn Simons ($32.5 billion) were replaced by Iris Fontbona and Zheng Shuliang ($33.2 billion), vice chair of a Chinese aluminum company founded by her late husband.
Syria said Iran-backed Hezbollah had fired artillery shells into its territory from Lebanon overnight, state media reported on Tuesday, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Shia movement.
Syrian army officials said artillery shells fired from Lebanon landed near the town of Serghaya, west of Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday.
The army accused Hezbollah of targeting Syrian army positions, telling the news agency it observed Hezbollah reinforcements at the Syrian-Lebanese border.
“The Syrian Arab Army will not tolerate any aggression targeting Syria,” the army said in a statement to SANA.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during US-Israeli strikes.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have clashed in eastern Lebanon in recent days, and Israel has carried out strikes across Lebanon, including on the capital Beirut.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Hezbollah of working to “collapse” the state, while the head of the group’s parliamentary bloc said it had “no other option… than the option of resistance.”
Hezbollah provided military support to former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown in December 2024 by an Islamist coalition hostile to the pro-Iranian Shia movement.
Since then, its supply routes from Syria have been cut off, and Lebanese and Syrian authorities are trying to combat smuggling across the porous border between the two countries.
Dangote refinery has slashed petrol and diesel prices by N100.
In the latest pricing template from the refinery, issued on March 10, 2026, the price of petrol at the gantry has been reduced by ₦100, bringing it down to ₦1,075 per litre from the earlier price of ₦1,175 per litre.
The refinery has further stated that the price of PMS for coastal supply will now be set at ₦1,050 per litre, which accounts for a minor adjustment due to maritime distribution expenses.
In a similar manner, the cost of Automotive Gas Oil (diesel) has been lowered to ₦1,430 per litre at the gantry. This marks a reduction of ₦190 from the previous price of ₦1,620 per litre.
The refinery pointed out that the prices at the gantry do not include fees from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
Walmart heiress, Alice Walton again tops Forbes world’s richest women list
Middle East conflict: Syria accuses Hezbollah of firing shells into its domain
Dangote Refinery slashes petrol, diesel prices
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