FG Commits To Boosting Surgical Research In Tertiary Institutions

The Federal Government yesterday said it would boost surgical research in tertiary institutions.

Dr Kamil Soretire, the Director, Health Planning, Research and Statistics of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, disclosed this in Lagos at the annual meeting of the National Institute of Health Research, Global Surgery Unit (NIHR GSU).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NIHR GSU meeting is an international event that provides a platform for leading experts, researchers and practitioners in the field of global surgery to discuss and chart ways for improved surgical care.

The theme of the 2025 conference was: “Equipping Surgeons for Surgical Research – Role of Regulatory Instructions.”

Soretire said: “The ministry associates with NIHR GSU initiatives to boost surgical research in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

“Most of the centres that are involved in surgical research are either Federal  Medical Centres or Federal Teaching Hospitals with few state-owned health institutions.

“This is very good for the ministry, because it shows that both federal and state governments are collaborating and building capacity for research.”

Also, Prof. Adesoji Ademuyiwa, a Director of the NIHR GSU, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, said that the theme of the 2025 conference was apt.

Ademuyiwa said that research, particularly clinical research, was an enterprise that required interactions with patients.

He said that in surgical research, lives are at stake and there are many risks but it was important that it should done for the patients’ benefit.

The professor of Pediatric Surgery said further that in this kind of research, it was important that there must be regulations, as one could not do anything one liked.

He noted that, due to the regulatory authorities’ input, surgeons are now more careful to ensure that the level of research they conduct in Nigeria are high-level research, generating the best evidence possible.

Ademuyiwa said that these researches are called randomised control trials, and they required approval from both the National Health Ethics Research Committee and the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control before they are conducted.

“Surgeons decided that if they are going to meet up with the requirements of surgical research, it is best to have the regulatory bodies train them to conduct high-level research,” Ademuyiwa said.

Also, Prof Wasiu Adeyemo, Chief Medical Director, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), said that the conference was all about training the surgeons to be researchers.

Adeyemo, who was represented by the Deputy Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, Dr Rufus Ojewola, said that the essence of the conference was not for surgeons to focus on one aspect of their responsibilities alone.

He said that LUTH was the hub of the surgical research network, being the centre where most of the activities are coordinated and every other hospital in the network are called the spoke. (NAN)