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By Sola Ogundipe
With termination rates climbing astatine an alarming gait successful Nigeria, Vanguard’s 3rd Mental Health Summit emerges arsenic a beacon of hope, urgency, and action.
Aptly themed “Taming the Rising Tide of Suicide successful Nigeria”, the forum calls for a nationalist reckoning and the urgent request to code the pressing nationalist wellness crisis.
This year’s gathering connected Friday, October 17, astatine the Civic Centre successful Lagos, brings unneurotic a cautiously selected lineup of speakers, intelligence wellness professionals, survivors, advocates, policymakers, and thought leaders who are not lone experts successful their fields but besides passionate agents of change.
These speakers are acceptable to connection insights, strategies, and stories that volition situation indifference and misconceptions, and animate corporate enactment arsenic the federation copes with the affectional toll and societal interaction of suicide.
Their voices volition illuminate the analyzable realities down termination successful Nigeria, from the deep-set taste stigma and systemic neglect to the large soundlessness of suffering successful society.
The president of the transformative lawsuit advocating for these alteration makers is the Executive Director of the Nigeria Heart Foundation, Dr. Kingsley Akinroye. A seasoned doc and planetary wellness person successful Cardiovascular Health and Non-Communicable Diseases, skilled successful cardiovascular epidemiology, advocacy, policy, communications, governance, capableness gathering and multi-sectoral partnerships.
The Chairman, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) representing Cross River South Senatorial District astatine the National Assembly, distinguished Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong, who is the Special Guest of Honour, volition springiness remarks astir the Suicide Decriminalisation Bill presently earlier the National Assembly.
The Bill which has passed 1st speechmaking connected the level of the National Assembly, is simply a landmark legislative effort aimed astatine shifting the country’s attack to termination from punishment to prevention and care.
The measure seeks to repeal colonial-era laws that criminalise attempted termination nether Sections 327 and 231 of Nigeria’s Criminal and Penal Codes, which presently enforce up to 1 twelvemonth jailhouse word for survivors of termination attempts. Rather, the measure proposes a health-centered, rights-based model that treats termination arsenic a nationalist wellness issue, not a crime.
The keynote talker astatine the Summit is simply a renowned Professor of Psychiatry, argumentation reformer, and Continental Representative for LifeLine International, Professor Taiwo Lateef Sheikh. An world person astatine the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and a starring dependable successful African intelligence wellness advocacy, Sheikh has held apical roles, including President of the Association of Psychiatrists successful Nigeria and Medical Director of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Kaduna.
He played a pivotal relation successful shaping Nigeria’s intelligence wellness landscape, co-authoring the Mental Health Policies (2013 & 2023), the National Suicide Prevention Framework (2023), and the landmark National Mental Health Act (2021).
The Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa (Rtd) volition talk connected the sub-theme: “Substance and Silence: Unmasking the Dual Crisis of Addiction and Suicide”.
Marwa, who is starring Nigeria’s toughest warfare connected drugs with precision and passion, has transformed the NDLEA into a powerhouse cracking down connected cartels, expanding rehab programmes, and pushing for smarter cause policies. His committedness towards the eradication of cause maltreatment and dependency to support lives, reconstruct hope, and marque Nigeria safer is impeccable.
Also connected the rotation telephone is the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration & Control (NAFDAC), Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, who volition present a peculiar presumption on “Building trust: How beardown regularisation improves entree to intelligence wellness treatment”. Adeyeye, a Fulbright Scholar and patent holder and globally renowned pharmaceutical idiosyncratic with implicit 3 decades successful cause improvement and regulatory science, is simply a fierce advocator for harmless medicines and vulnera...
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