Sanwo-Olu inaugurates SFH’s innovation hub in Lagos

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has inaugurated the Society for Family Health (SFH) Innovation Hub to accelerate quality health solutions for families across Nigeria.

Sanwo-Olu, represented by Prof. Akin Abayomi, Lagos state Commissioner for Health, inaugurated the hub sited at Ikeja, on Friday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the building, spread across three floors, was to honour the memory of one of SFH’s founders and a former Minister of Health, Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti.

Sanwo-Olu said that innovation had always been a driving force behind advancements in health, revolutionising the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases

According to him, the state and country have alarming health statistics that should bother all citizens, adding that almost all equipment, drugs, and vaccines used in the health sector are imported.

“We’re just beginning to make a dent into the pharmaceutical space. We’re beginning to make more varieties of pharmaceuticals in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos and Ogun State.

“But, you know, those are simple drugs. We want to now start moving into more complex formulas and drive the industry around vaccine development.

“Manufacturing vaccines is backed by a whole culture of research, innovation and development,” he said.

He said that SFH and the Ministry of Health are collaborating on some challenges plaguing the public health environment, especially in the area of malaria and fevers.

“We are at a fairly advanced stage in developing certain key strategies to bring down the incidence of malaria in Nigeria to try and even get to the point where we can talk about the elimination of malaria from this environment.

“We’ve heard that certain parts of Africa are close to elimination of malaria.

“That’s not going to happen just by praying and by wondering how to do it.

“It’s going to happen by collaborating, by being intentional, by thinking about the problem and trying to find the solution,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu said the SFH lab would aid ideation, collaboration and contribute to enhancing national ecosystems that enable the systematic use of innovation to promote health equity.

The governor commended SFH for the initiative and its honour of Prof. Ransome-Kuti, whom he described as a visionary leader who transformed the nation’s health sector.

Similarly, Dr Amina El-Amin, Commissioner of Health, Kwara, said the hub provided an opportunity for physical and intellectual synergy to tackle the challenges in the Nigerian health space.

El-Amin noted that strategic public/private collaboration was critical to homegrown solutions that would advance local manufacturing and quality healthcare services.

“So, in Nigeria, we want hubs like this, where people can ideate, co-create, share ideas, bounce ideas off one another, test their ideas, and execute them before they are taken out and deployed into the field.

“This is the way we will succeed in Nigeria. Not by importing ideas that were not designed for our peculiarity and for our people,” she said.

Commenting, Prof. Ekanem Braide, Board President of SFH, said the hub would serve as a co-creation space to host start-ups and think tanks to accelerate impact and digital health-driven solutions.

“The SFH Innovation Hub is a testament to our belief that health solutions must be anchored in creativity, co-creation, and collaboration.

“In today’s rapidly evolving health landscape, we face challenges that demand adaptive, forward-thinking solutions.

“This hub will serve as a vital incubator for ideas that not only address our most pressing health issues but also empower communities to take charge of their health,” Braide said.

Also, Dr Omokhudu Idogho, Managing Director, SFH, said the hub was at the core of its sustainability and partnership journey and focused on leading research, and quality delivery of innovation to scale.

Idogho said the hub would strengthen national ecosystems to support systematic, impactful innovation that promotes health equity.

He said that by providing normative guidance, scaling impactful ideas, and fostering collaborative learning, the innovation hub would sustain and disseminate health solutions that are built to last.

“Our teams here are focused on driving innovative health ideas to scale up solutions, all the way to our SFH Access Care, our circular technology platform providing digital solutions and telemedicine to our massive Supply Chain initiative, which is transforming supply chains to improve sub-national and development partners procurement and public health systems.

“Our Innovation hub is a great platform to put our expertise to work with our partners to scale up our impact,” he said.