BackgroundIn Nigeria, several challenges have been reported within the health sector, especially in training, funding, employment, and deployment of the health workforce. We aimed to review recent health workforce crises in the Nigerian health sector to identify key underlying causes and provide recommendations toward preventing and/or managing potential future crises in Nigeria.MethodsWe conducted a scoping literature search of PubMed to identify studies on health workforce and health governance in Nigeria. A critical analysis, with extended commentary, on recent health workforce crises (2010–2016) and the health system in Nigeria was conducted.ResultsThe Nigerian health system is relatively weak, and there is yet a coordinated response across the country. A number of health workforce crises have been reported in recent times due to several months’ salaries owed, poor welfare, lack of appropriate health facilities and emerging factions among health workers. Poor administration and response across different levels of government have played contributory roles to further internal crises among health workers, with different factions engaged in protracted supremacy challenge. These crises have consequently prevented optimal healthcare delivery to the Nigerian population.ConclusionsAn encompassing stakeholders’ forum in the Nigerian health sector remain essential. The national health system needs a solid administrative policy foundation that allows coordination of priorities and partnerships in the health workforce and among various stakeholders. It is hoped that this paper may prompt relevant reforms in health workforce and governance in Nigeria toward better health service delivery in the country.

This paper contributes to intellectual discourse on the impact of barriers to firms’ innovative performance and external search strategies in the context of a developing country. Using data from the 2011 Nigeria’s innovation survey in the manufacturing sector, we tested three hypotheses: the relationship between barriers and firms’ innovativeness, breadth and depth of external knowledge sources. We found that firms’ innovativeness can decrease when they encounter a broad range of organisational rigidities. On the contrary, firms’ innovativeness increase in the face of regulatory constraints as firms may evolve ways to circumvent problematic bureaucracies while expectedly, as knowledge and infrastructure barriers become more intense, firms find it difficult to implement innovations. Similarly, we found that higher intensity of barriers, particularly knowledge and infrastructure barriers is associated with lower breadth of search. Hence, our results underscore the importance of regulation and infrastructure as key requirements for enhancing not only firm-level innovation but also knowledge search activities of firms.

Background and Aim: Despite transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) being regarded as gold standard for prostate volume estimation, concerns have been raised in the literature concerning its accuracy especially in men with above-average prostate volumes. We aimed to evaluate the performance of TRUS for prostate volume estimation in a cohort of sub-Saharan African men since they are known to have relatively large mean prostate volumes. Methods: This was a prospective study of 77 sub-Saharan African men who had open simple prostatectomy for benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). Pre-operative TRUS determined total prostate volume (TPV) and transition zone volume (TZV). Following surgical enucleation, the adenoma was weighed (EPW) and its volume (EPV) also determined by fluid displacement. TRUS was repeated six weeks post-operatively to calculate the TRUS-estimated specimen volume (TESV).