The University of Abuja’s National Centre of Excellence for Sickle Cell Disease Research and Training has announced that it will receive more than £5 million in funding to enhance its research capacity and develop lasting solutions for sickle cell disease.

Prof. Obiageli Nnodu, the Co-PI of Patient-Centred Sickle Cell Disease Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (PACTS) and Director of CESRTA, made the announcement at a workshop organised in partnership with NCESRTA and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM).

The event was titled ‘Strengthening Institutional Research Capacity and Safeguarding’.

Prof. Nnodu said: “It’s a research that we are carrying out with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Kwame Nkrumah University of Health and Allied Science and Technology and University of Zambia Teaching Hospital. It’s over £5 million.”

Nnodu emphasised the importance of research for national development and added that it was beneficial for African institutions to develop their capacity for research training. He underlined the need to establish the right infrastructure, not only to secure grants but also to monitor, manage, and conduct research projects, as well as to report and implement research findings into society and policy.

“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,” he said.

The Don, who disclosed that the centre has benefited from both internal and external institutional-based research grants over the years, noted that even though there was sufficient research funding for every faculty to conduct annual assessments, only a few lecturers were exploring the opportunity to utilise 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 five 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 member 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, Prof. Imelda Bates, noted cuts in external research funding to Africa; however maintained institutions across sub-Saharan Africa needed 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 about the implementation research, which allows for direct engagement with sickle cell patients, added that health insurance companies have promised to support sickle cell patients in getting 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, 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 and

“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.

“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 work for them in their environment, and then test 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.”

Earlier, the Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Abuja, Prof. Patricia Lar, expressed confidence that the workshop would provide participants with knowledge, actionable strategies, and strengthen networks in tackling the diseases.

Represented by her Senior Special Assistant on Academic Matters, Prof. Rhoda Mundi, she emphasised the importance of adopting precautionary measures in the fight against Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), urging greater awareness and action to mitigate its impact on affected populations.