Homegrown solutions will help improve nation’s health indices -NIMR Foundation
By Kemi Akintokun
Dr Olajide Sobande, the Executive Director, Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Foundation, on Monday highlighted the need to proffer homegrown solutions to some of the nation’s health challenges through research.
Sobande said this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the ongoing 2025 Grantmanship and Mentorship Training Programme (GMTP) Cohort 5 organised by the NIMR Foundation for researchers in Lagos.
According to him, such solutions will help to improve the health indices of the nation.
He said: “The problem we have are peculiar to us – the growing problem of communicable diseases that has always been with us and non-communicable diseases that are largely responsible for the high morbidity and mortality rate in the country.
“Some of our healthcare workers have left the country in search of greener pastures and the recent events where the U.S. withdrew a lot of its funding on health globally.
“It is time for us to look inward and begin to fund our own health-care research that will improve our health system to ensure a better outcome for Nigerians.”
On the GMTP, the executive director said the programme sponsored by the NIMR Foundation aimed at improving the capacity of early career researchers selected from across the country.
He said that 29 researchers are participating in this year’s edition, while a total of 120 researchers selected from universities and research institutions across the country had benefited from the programme since inception in 2022.
“This programme focuses on developing the next set of researchers to do quality research that will influence policies and practice of healthcare in the country.
“The training has also been continuously refined over the years driven largely by feedback from participants, implementation lessons and innovative ideas gleaned from similar programmes and refinement of the logical framework to achieve the broad aim of the training.
“The overall goal of this programme is to improve health outcomes for Nigerians and ultimately develop homegrown technologies, vaccines and medicines that will meet the health needs of our people,” Sobande said.
NAN reports that NIMR Foundation is a private, non-profit organisation established by the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in 2018 and was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission in February 2020.
The NIMR Foundation has the mandate to build and expand capacity for translational research among early career investigators.
The foundation seeks to promote innovation, development and commercialisation of homegrown medicines, vaccines and technologies to address the country’s health challenges. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Christiana Fadare
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