A shortage of nurses at U.S. hospitals hit West Virginia’s Charleston Area Medical Center at the worst possible time.

The non-profit healthcare system is one of the state’s largest employers and sits in the heart of economically depressed coal country. It faces a $40 million deficit this year as it struggles with fewer privately insured patients, cuts in government reimbursement and higher labor costs to attract a shrinking pool of nurses.

A researcher, Prof. Madubuike Ezeibe, has called on the Federal Government to carry out a clinical trial of the drug he invented, Aluminum-Magnesium Silicate (AMS), for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Ezeibe, a professor of Veterinary Medicine, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU), made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Umuahia on Monday.

Despite a dramatic fall in the infant mortality rate, 15,000 children aged under five still die each day around the world from preventable diseases, a UN report said yesterday. The report warned that because some African and South Asian countries are lagging behind in giving better treatment, more than 60 million young children will die between now and 2030 from illnesses that can be cured.

The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said on Friday that it has approved a domestically developed Ebola vaccine.

The vaccine was developed by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and CanSino Biologics INC.

Dr Suraj Abdulkarim, Programme Manager, Gombe State Agency for the Control of HIV and AIDS (GOMSACA) says 50 per cent of people in the state do not know their status.

The Programme Manager, who disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN in Gombe on Thursday, stressed the need for people to visit designated health centres to carryout HIV test to know their status.