Nutritional Assessment of Primary School Pupils in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State; Nigeria

This is a descriptive survey that was carried out to assess the nutritional status of school pupil in Bokkos. A multi-staged sampling technique was used. An interview guide (Structured Questionnaires) was used to obtain data from the pupils of the various primary schools in Bokkos. The result showed that 34 of the pupils are within the age range (7-9) years. and 17.5 of the pupils are of the age range of (13-15) years. Mean age of respondents was 6.6years. Furthermore the average height and weight of the respondents was 1.27m and 27kg respectively. The average body mass index of the study population is 12.6 kg/m2. A null hypothesis tested at significant level of 0.05 suggested that; there is no/a significant relationship between BMI and gender. It was therefore concluded that the nutritional status of pupils in Bokkos is low. Recommendations like nutritional education on the constituent of food locally available in the community; and Government should subsidize agricultural inputs so as to encourage local farmers to produce crops that have high nutritional value among others were made

Nursing Shortage Paradigm: The Bayelsa State Situation

This paper attempted to educate the reader about the shortage of nursing staff and how it affects Bayelsa State's health sector. Bayelsa State like any other state in Nigeria has enormous health challenges associated with manpower shortage. Bayelsa's situation is unique because of its terrain. Some factors such as cost of river transport; insecurity of lives and properties due to incessant attacks from sea pirates; poor housing; lack of portable water; deplorable state of hospitals and health centres; erratic or lack of power supply; inadequate nursing personnel; and uneven distribution of the few nurses available; were identified to be peculiar with Bayelsa terrain. This consequently resulted in increased nurse- patient load; risk for error; infection spread; high mortality rate; quackery and chances of nurses being over stressed. Recommendation such as increase in the rural posting allowance for nurses; provision of social amenities in rural areas; employment of more nurses from various states of the federation among others were made