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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/nigerians-mali-sex-slavery/

At Least 20,000 Nigerian Girls Found After Being Sold Into Sex Slavery

NAPTIP says that they are in “slave-like conditions.”

By Jerica Deck

|Jan. 23, 2019

Why Global Citizens Should Care

Nigerians have been trafficked to at least 40 countries, where most survivors face abuse and exploitation. About 77% of human trafficking survivors have been sexually exploited by traffickers. You can help women and girls around the world by taking action here.

At least 20,000 missing women and girls were found to have been trafficked from Nigeria to Mali, the head of Nigeria’s anti-trafficking agency said on Tuesday, after they received information revealing that the young women were living in “slave-like” conditions, according to CNN .

“The conditions are horrible,” said Julie Okah-Donli, the director-general of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). “They are kept in shanties in the thick of the forest where they cannot escape and with the ‘madames’ watching over them."

Some of the girls were abducted on their way to school. But most were tricked by human traffickers who promised them jobs in Malaysia. Instead, the girls, some as young as 16, were left stranded in Mali, where many were sold into prostitution, CNN reports.

Each year, thousands of Nigerians are illegally trafficked around the world. Nigerians have been trafficked to at least 40 countries, where most survivors face abuse and exploitation, according to a report from the US Department of State. About 97% of these human trafficking survivors are women, and 77% have been sexually abused or exploited by their traffickers.

For NAPTIP, rescuing survivors is an ongoing effort. Its rescue mission Operation Timbuktu helped 104 trafficking survivors escape from three brothels in Bamako which is Mali’s capital in 2011. And the organization helped repatriate dozens of the more recently trafficked women late last year, Reuters reports.

Officials hope to continue helping survivors escape prostitution and return back to Nigeria. Okah-Donli said that her agency NAPTIP is teaming up with the International Organization for Migration, a UN-affiliate, to help survivors escape sex trafficking.

While they don’t have an estimated number of Nigerian girls who were trafficked to other parts of Africa, the agency plans to send help to neighboring countries. Nigerians are predominantly trafficked to Europe, but Ghana, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast are common places for trafficking to occur as well.

For patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, aspirin and other NSAIDs raised overall five-year survival from 25 to 78 percent but only if their cancer had a PIK3CA gene that was mutated or amplified. This is huge because the five-year survival rate is about 45 percent for this type of cancer.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-01-common-pain-reliever-survival-neck.html

Common pain reliever can improve survival in head and neck cancer

by University of California, San Francisco

January 25, 2019

Regular use of a common type of medication, such as aspirin and ibuprofen, significantly improves survival for a third or more patients with head and neck cancer, a new study led by UC San Francisco has found.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, improved the overall five-year survival rate from 25 percent to 78 percent for patients whose cancer contained a specific altered gene, known as PIK3CA, the researchers reported. The survival for patients whose gene was not altered in their tumor, was unaffected by NSAID use.

This is the first study to show a strong clinical advantage of regular NSAID use for head and neck cancer patients with mutations in the PIK3CA gene and may indicate a clear, biological reason to implement NSAID therapy in certain cases of the disease, said the authors.

The paper is published January 25, 2019 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

"Our results suggest that the use of NSAIDs could significantly improve outcomes for not only head and neck cancer patients, but also patients with other cancers that contained the PIK3CA mutation," said Jennifer R. Grandis, MD, a UCSF professor of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery, and senior author of the paper.

"The magnitude of the apparent advantage is strong, and could potentially have a positive impact on human health," Grandis said.

Within head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, PIK3CA is the most commonly altered oncogene, with 34 percent of all tumors carrying mutations that activate the PIK3CA gene. In head and neck cancer associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV), PIK3CA is mutated in more than half of tumors.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is a complex malignancy that carries a poor prognosis: the five-year survival rate is about 45 percent. According to the American Cancer Society, head and neck cancer accounts for approximately 4 percent of all cancers in the United States, with an estimated 65,000 people developing it annually.

While the disease can occur in the young, most patients are above age 50 when diagnosed. Primary risk factors include smoking, alcohol use, and HPV infection.

NSAIDs, which include over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen and aspirin, are known to relieve pain and reduce inflammation, fever and blood clots. They are the most frequently-prescribed medication for conditions such as arthritis.

In the new research, 266 patients from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center whose tumors were surgically removed were investigated by the study authors. The majority (84 percent) smoked and 67 percent received post-surgery chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Median overall survival was 66 months.

Altogether, 75 tumors (28 percent) in the study had an activating alteration of the PIK3CA gene.

Among the patients who regularly used NSAIDs, 93 percent used aspirin as a component of the NSAID regiment, and 73 percent took aspirin exclusively. Most of the regular users started on the aspirin therapy following their head and neck cancer diagnosis.

The investigators learned that regular use of NSAIDs for at least six months provided "markedly prolonged" improved survival compared to non-use for patients whose PIK3CA gene was mutated or amplified—in these patients, NSAIDs raised overall five-year survival from 25 to 78 percent. However, patients without alterations in their PIK3CA gene were no better off by taking NSAIDs.

Through analysis of both cell line and mouse studies, the researchers speculated that NSAIDs likely blocked tumor growth by reducing the production of an inflammatory molecule called prostaglandin E2.

The researchers pointed out that their results need to be corroborated in a prospective trial. Additionally, they noted limitations, including the small size of the study group, as well as the type, timing, and dosages of NSAIDs taken by patients.

[Moar at website]

Journal article: Journal of Experimental Medicine (2019).

http://jem.rupress.org/content/early/2019/01/25/jem.20181936