Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
In no distance time respite will come the way of the sickle cell sufferers as the Centre of Excellence for Sickle Cell Research and Training (NCESTRA) domiciled at the University of Abuja (UniAbuja) said it has continued the search for an improved knowledge and care for sickle cell anemia in Nigeria and beyond.
Director of NCESTRA, at the UniAbuja, Prof. Obiageli Nnodu, revealed this heartwarming news at the Patient-centered Sickle Cell Disease Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (PACTS) workshop held at the institution in Abuja.
The workshop which was organized by CESTRA in collaboration with PACTS Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), has its theme as “Strengthening Institutional Research Capacity and Safeguarding”.
Prof. Nnodu said the Centre and its research activities have been receiving premium recognition from global bodies, disclosing that recently, NCESTRA in UniAbuja alongside a few other international institutions were awarded over £5 million in grant to advance sickle cell research across sub-Saharan Africa.
According to her “This was a landmark achievement for NCESTRA. Research is a very important vehicle for national development, and it is good for African institutions to have the capacity to do research strengthening through training and right infrastructures in place.
“It’s not only to win grants but to monitor, manage, and carry out the research projects and to be able to report and implement findings from research projects into the society and into policy.
“So, this capacity strengthening workshop is very important for us because over the past four years, we have had significant increase in the number of research grants that we are attracted, but we also have a faculty that needs to have their capacity built to participate in funded research.”
The Principal Investigator for PACTS, Prof. Imelda Bates, described the new approach to sickle cell research as transformative because it places patients at the centre of the research.
“Patient-centred sickle cell disease management is a totally new way of doing research because it puts the patients at the centre. We speak to the patients about their experiences, and that helps us to address some of the challenges through the research.
“We choose Nigeria in this case because Nigeria has the highest burden of sickle cell disease in the world. So, it’s clearly an absolute priority for the country to do research on sickle cell disease.
“This project is jointly led by myself and Prof. Nnodu. But we also have partners in Kumasi in Ghana and Lusaka in Zambia as well as the Imperial College in London. NCESTRA in UniAbuja serves as a hub for implementation research and also a lot of training on building research capacity.
“So our project is really helping the patients to access better care in the hospitals, and so we are working with the communities, we are working with the health facilities where they go.
“Another components of our project is 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,” she said.
Meanwhile, the UniAbuja Acting Vice Chancellor, Prof. Patricia Lar, who was represented by her Senior Special Assistant on Academic Matters, Prof. Rhoda Mundi, said the workshop reflects the institution’s commitment to tackling the burden of sickle cell disease.
“It also represents a key moment in our shared commitment to advancing research excellence particularly in the fight against sickle cell disease, which is a public health challenge, not only in Nigeria, but in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.”
She emphasized that building research capacity is both a strategic necessity and a responsibility for institutions seeking to create lasting solutions.
“So, I hope that this is an opportunity to share knowledge, to learn from one another, and to form a collective result to improve health outcomes in Nigeria and beyond to improve the quality of the research we have,” she said.