... get over 5m pounds grant
The University of Abuja is among some universities currently undertaking research to find sustainable solutions to sickle cell disease in Africa.
Already, over five million pounds has been made available for the researchers to access in the project backed by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
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The University of Abuja,which disclosed this through its National Centre of Excellence for Sickle Cell Disease Research and Training,NCESRTA, at a capacity-building workshop for the researchers, held Tuesday,in Abuja,explained that the grant was meant to strengthen the capacity of the researchers.
The Co-PI Patient- Centered Sickle Cell Disease Management in Sub-Saharan Africa ,PACTS, and Director CESRTA, Prof Obiageli Nnodu, spoke at the workshop organised in partnership with NCESRTA and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,LSTM.
Themed, "Strengthening Institutional Research Capacity and Safeguarding, " the workshop aims to strengthen institutional based research on sickle cell disease.
The research is being carried out in collaboration with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Kwame Nkrumah University of Health and Allied Science and Technology and University of Zambia Teaching Hospital, respectively.
This is coming at a time when sickle cell disease places a significant burden on sub-Saharan Africa, where it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly in children.
High prevalence of the sickle cell trait, coupled with limited access to comprehensive healthcare, exacerbates the challenges.
Approximately 75% of the over 300,000 babies born with SCD annually globally are in sub-Saharan Africa. In many African countries, a large percentage of children with sickle cell disease die before the age of five due to infections and other complications.
Nigeria carries the world's highest burden of sickle cell disease with an estimated 150,000 children born with the condition annually.
Speaking further at the event, Prof. Nnodu who stressed the importance of research to national development, added that it was good for African institutions to have their capacity to undergo research training, ensure they put the right infrastructure in place not only to win grants, but to monitor, manage and carry out research projects as well as to report and implement findings from research projects into the society into policy.
She said,"This capacity strengthening workshop is a very important one in our university because over the past four years we've had significant increases in the number of research grants that we're getting but we also have what I would tend to say is a population, a faculty that needs to have their capacity built to participate in funded research."
Nnodu, who disclosed that the centre has benefited from both internal and external institutional based research grants over the years, noted even though there was enough research funding for every faculty to assess annually, only few lecturers were exploring the opportunity to assess the funds and carry out research.
"The external grants are less than 10 and it's pretty much the same people which we are not happy about, we want them to increase. The internal institutional based research fund has been increasing from 5 to 10, to 20, to 37, to 55 although our funding agency doesn't think we are doing enough because the goal is to have every faculty to assess one in a year and the provision is there.
"It used to be up to N2 million but now it's N5 million for the institutional based research and that's really the one I want to train people in every faculty. Every lecturer should be able to win such and carry out the pilot studies that will help them to do more."
The Principal Investigator PACTS, Imelda Bates who noted cuts in external research funding to Africa, however maintained it was critical for institutions across sub-Saharan Africa to have strong research systems so they could decide what research they want to undertake by themselves.
She said: "They have their own researchers who can solve the problems of the country rather than having the topics decided by external people. And I think the money is going to be less now so it's got to be more efficiently used to do the research that the country needs."
Bates who was excited with the implementation research which allows for direct engagement with sickle cell patients, added that health insurance companies have promised to support sickle cell patients to get their drugs.
"It's a totally new way of doing research because it puts the patients at the centre of all of our research. So we talk to them about their problems and then we try to address some of those through research.
"Obviously Nigeria is the place to do this because Nigeria has by far, the biggest population in the world of those living with sickle cell disease. So it's clearly an absolute priority for the country to do research on sickle cell disease.
"We're collaborating in Nigeria and in Zambia and Ghana and other partner countries, we're working with insurance companies to try and make sure that these particularly impoverished families can get some insurance cover for their health care. We're working with medical stores, with drug manufacturers to try and make sure that when they do manage to get to a health facility the drugs that they need are going to be available and being there.
"The health insurance system is now looking much harder at supporting the very poorest ones to get health care and medicine so we've already had some successes even though we're not finished in the project yet.
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"The patients themselves, their families and the people they interact with in the health facilities are the main people in our project. They're telling us about the problems and then we work with them to find solutions that will work for them in their environment and then to test out some of those solutions. So it's very low cost in terms of the solutions and improvements."
"We also have part of the components of our project to work with the media and it's really important because we understand that there's a lot of misinformation, a lot of myths around sickle cell disease and it creates a lot of stigma for these families."
Speaking earlier, the Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Abuja, Prof. Patricia Lar ,expressed confidence that the workshop will provide participants with knowledge, actionable strategies and strengthen networks in tackling the disease.
Speaking through her representative and
Senior Special Assistant on Academic Matters, Prof. Rhoda Mundi, the acting vice chancellor stressed the importance of embracing precautionary measures in the fight against Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), calling for greater awareness and action to mitigate its impact on affected populations.
